Please confirm my really bad problem?

[jasonmg]

Majanos & Aiptasia eradicated (so far anyway) no sign of any survivors. Did a water change last night and all looks good. Fish, snails and crabs eating well (inc. the bubble algae) and all water tests are in range.
What is the next step? More live rock (which I definitely need) or add the rock slowly over time and add fish or something else first?

 

[BeginnerReefer]

Read this thread... this is what came to mind..



Anyways. I wouldn't recommend boiling your rocks, as a newbie myself I had to deal with aiptasia in the first week as well. If you take the 'easy' way out (although its probably not that easy) you wouldn't be learning anything beneficial for the future unless you plan on becoming a professional at cooking rock. Basically I've learned to take pests as a learning experience. If you don't learn it now, you might have a bigger problem in the future, and no idea how to solve it.

So IMHO I would say take this small problem and learn from it, because when you have a fully set up tank a little bit of experience with a pest can go a long way.

 

[Sk8r]

You probably had a couple-day cycle. You have very live rock, I'd say, probably a lot of species, and you will have few-week blooms of this and that on your way to balance. Everybody gets/has gotten bubble algae: it comes and goes. Everybody gets/has gotten a few majanos or aiptasia, no big deal. None of these things becomes a runaway pest unless you have, or develop, a water quality issue. Most common issues are excess of nutrients: cultivate some bristleworms and more hermits; or phosphate---set up a fuge or a Phosban reactor (anti-algae); or just bouncing chemistry (unstable relationship between buffer, calcium and magnesium). Get those under control and you will get most every pest species under control, even (shudder) caulerpa weed. Just be glad you have life, and just take measures to assure it stays moderately in check.

 

[Dweezle]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=14863880#post14863880 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by rkelman
"bought last week as a trial fish to check tank conditions"

A word to the wise.. Don't mention "trial fish".. People get pretty uptight about it. Its not good practice to subject a fish to poor tank conditions as a test or to cycle a tank. Its long been a practice in this hobby that is now frowned upon. It sounds like your tank is fine but just a fyi

That always gets me. Add a damsel and you get "the speech", but no one's out there sticking up for the silver sides, feeder gold fish, or the #3 combo at LJS. Where exactly is the line..... Is there just no love for the ugle fish?

 

[AJSTITAN14]

We got some Aiptasia on our LR but it also has some really cool Hitchhikers like a brittle star and three leather corals.

Definitely not going to cook it. Im planning on dealing with it using the injection method and getting a few of the right species of peps. If that does not work Ill be getting Berghia Nudibranchs

 

[KarlBob]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=14882567#post14882567 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by Dweezle
That always gets me. Add a damsel and you get "the speech", but no one's out there sticking up for the silver sides, feeder gold fish, or the #3 combo at LJS. Where exactly is the line..... Is there just no love for the ugle fish?

Back when I kept fresh water tanks, I always included at least one feeder goldfish. If they were tough enough to survive the hideous conditions in the feeder tank, I figured they could survive anything. One or two were already sick and died, but usually they lived for years.

 

[Lightsluvr]

Back OT

Back OT

I wouldn't recommend "cooking" the LR. Over the years I have found that injecting boiling water, lemon juice, Joe's Juice and Aiptasia-X just seem to pi$$ off the Aiptasia and they come back with a vengance...

A pair of Berghia nudibranchs is no more expensive than a bottle of Joe's Juice. The difference is that Berghia will multiply like rabbits as long as there is Aiptasia to eat. They truly control it, right down to small holes where the anenome hides...

For Majano, the injection treatment is the only way I know to kill or control it...

For bubble algae, you might try 3 days of darkness to slow the growth and then use a siphon hose draining through a filter sock back into your sump to manually remove the bubbles... You just have to stay on top of this annoying growth. Maintaining good water quality will also help...


JME.

LL

 

[jasonmg]

Thought I would come back to some previous posts and threads and from when I started out 18 months ago. I wanted to make sure things I did wrong when I started weren't happening again...

Anyway...

Aiptasia & Majano treatment using 10:1 boiling water and vinegar ABSOLUTELY WORKS every time. The only time I have ever got them back is when adding a new item to the tank and it comes in as a hitch hiker (got no space for QT - so its a fresh water dip and hope)

It has never had one single bad effect on any other livestock or water parameters - however total volume is 250G so I wouldn't expect 1mL of vinegar to do so on a large tank.

Didn't have to take the over the top excessive option of removing the rock and starting again and burning $600. Tank is going really well. As some of the posts above mentioned - keep water quality under control and Nitrates/Phosphates near zero and algae goes away.