Live rock cleaning

[Thunderkat]

As many of you know I am restarting my aquarium.

I am using the plenum system but I am also going to use live rock. I am going to put a stand on my sand to keep the substrate clear and then stack the live rock on this stand.

How can I add live rock that is guarnteed free of things like aiptasia and majanos? (or do I just have to boil it and make it dead rock?)

I also currently have some aiptasia on the same rocks that I have my mushrooms and zoos on. What can I do to remove those (the ones I see are not a problem, its the tiny ones that can't be seen that I am worried about). Could I just coat the rock with calcium hyrdoxide and not get any on the 'shrooms and zoos?

I also have a sponge that is living on a rock that my mushrooms are on and it started small and is spreading. I would like to keep that sponge alive too.

Like I said, I know how to kill the big aiptasia and majanos such as injecting with hot water, inject with Joe's Juice (that just sounds bad), and burnination with Trogdor (http://www.homestarrunner.com/sbemail58.html) and red hot screwdrivers. The tiny invisible ones are what I am worried about (don't want them starting again in my main tank).

[greasemonkey]

I use a syringe and shoot em full of vinegar. Put the point in the oral disc and shoot away. I dont know how well this works on the small ones we cant see, but it has eliminated all signs of them in my 75 and 10 gal. Kalk paste could cause problems in your tank.

[Thunderkat]

Do you think a light washing with vinegar on the surface of rocks would get tiny ones?

Edit: Also main tank is empty, not going to put my fish or corals in there until everything is perfect.

[greasemonkey]

I dont think that would be a good idea. It would change the ph in the rock, I would think. Hopefully someone will chime in and tell us if the baby aiptasia are connected to the parent. If so I would figure they would die with the parent anemone, after injection. Like I said, I think. I could be wrong. HTH

[CD]

www.berghia.net

TK - you should go peruse Larry's (Instar) berghia site. It will tell you everything you want to know about aptasia - LOTS of info, and a great site! ;)

Wendy :)

[Thunderkat]

The more I read on inverts the more I want to control whats going into my tank. This time around my main tank is going to be awesome. I don't want aiptasia, bristle worms, or mantis shrimp in this tank. There are also more things that I have read that are bad for aquariums.

Just trying to find out what methods people use to make their live rock reef safe.

[Polkster13]

Make sure the rock and corals you get don't have any of these things in the first place. Also, quarantine all new arrivals until you are absolutely sure there is nothing on them that you don't want that will migrate into your main display tank.

[GaryP]

Bristle Worms are a good thing, they are good detritivores. I'm afraid you are probably going to do more bad then good when trying to kill the pests. There are ways to control aiptasia that are a lot less destructive, such as berghia nudibranches. A big part of this hobby is learning to control the bad critters, just like the dinos. I've tried injecting vinegar and it never worked for me as a permanent solution. If just a few basal cells are left it will regrow and in the mean time you probably spread it more. Aiptasia are not the end of the world and are relatively easy to control with berghia.

[JesterGrin_1]

Or you can go Agracrete Rocks and new sand and then the only things in your tank is what you put in it.

[Thunderkat]

The problem I have with berhagia is when they eat all the aiptasia they will starve (do they eat majanos or zoos?).

Bristle worms according to the books are good for tanks. I had millions of them when I had my tank in hawaii, I think they were eating bacteria because I had an undergravel filter and only put enough food in the tank for the fish to eat. I even found one bristle worm that was over a foot long and about 1/2 inch thick in my tank. I put one of the "bad" crabs in my tank and it tore it up good. Those worms may have also been why my tank was so nice but I didn't like seeing all those worms swimming around.

Maybe I should stop reading that book on inverts, the more I read the more worried I get. :lol

[jaded]

I can’t see anyway to eliminate aptasia or any hitchhikers for that matter... its part of having a reef tank. As you add LR and LS you will bring things into the tank that you don't plan on. It's usually good stuff, but not always. Berghia, vinegar, joe’s juice, etc. can handle the aptasia, but don’t totally eliminate them... EVER! You can trap many hitchhikers like undesirable crabs, worms, etc. but remember that many of the things you’ve been told aren’t good really are, like bristleworms. My advice is to be as careful as possible about adding LR and deal with the problems they may or may not come up. Since you already know there will be some aptasia, then you will need to deal with them with one of the many methods that are available.

Washing the LR in vinegar probably is a really bad idea… I’m not sure about the affect it would have, but I doubt it would kill the aptasia if it’s not directly injected into the body.

Drying the LR before putting it in the tank would certainly kill the aptasia but it would also kill everything else

Trying to QT LR seems like a waste of time to me… I really don’t know how you would get the “bad stuff” out of the LR no matter how long you QT’d it. Maybe there’s a way that I don’t know about, that’s totally possible!!!

If it were me, I think I’d add your good LR and 6 or 9 berghia… any aptasia that gets big enough I’d inject with plain old white vinegar (that’s the only thing I’ve had any real luck with).

[GaryP]

Berghia never go away. Like I said, a few cells are always left over that will re-generate. You really need to talk to Instar about them. I think you are swimming against the tide here Hino. There is no other practical way to rid LR of aiptasia. You can go with peppermints. They MIGHT eat them, as well as a lot of other things in your tanks.

Excess food is not the only source of detritus in a tank. I wouldn't think an undergravel filter would have anymore bacteria then a DSB, probably less. Bristle worms eat detritus. If there is a lot of bristle worms then it follows there must be a good supply of food for them as well.

My opinion is that most pests are usually an indication of something else going on in the tank.

[JimD]

Jester nailed it, the only way to achieve you goal is to start with dead rock and new sand. Anything else and youre gonna run the risk of introducing nastys to the tank.

[Thunderkat]

Thanks Gary and Jaded. I guess I have just been getting worked up over nothing. I still don't want bristleworms due to them being poisonous. I don't want anything poisonous in there except soft corals.

You should have seen me freaking out when I saw that giant bristle worm in hawaii. When I introduced the carnivourous crab it yanked it out of a rock and ate the thing, it was cool watching it (took a while). My crab was later murdered by somebody off of my sub but I never found out who did it. :angry

[JesterGrin_1]

Thankya Jim D . But as I mentioned you can go the route I stated and get live sand and anything else you would like to add to the tank and by doing so you can control everything that goes into the tank. Even corals you can use cuttings and grow them in your tank without using any wild caught ones.

[GaryP]

Yes, you can start off with a dead tank, but you are probably looking at a long time before you will have a tank able to handle any biological load. In addition, you are going to be going through a lot of algae blooms and other potential pest problems. You just went through a very bad bloom situation, I don't think you want to do that again.

Try reading the bullet proof reef on the GARF website. I think you might get some good ideas from it.

[JesterGrin_1]

He He GaryP I was not going to mention that site but that is where I got all of that info on such a setup. I myself will be setting up a new tank soon and instead of cooking the rock I have I thought of just using a few pieces of my old rock with new rock of which I would make. Small tank really only 187 Gal. :)