Total overrun pest infestation, advice?

[Lee]

My tank is around 5-6 years old, (90g reef) and after its final move, I lost about half of my fish; all my favorites. A couple beloved Tang's that had been with me for years, and a few other favorites. I'm left now with my damn biting clown fish, a couple chromis, and a Coral Beauty. The loss of fish had me pretty discouraged from reefkeeping for a while, and needless to say, I've gotten pretty lazy with the tank. Things have really gotten out of control because of this.

Anyway, I always had a handful of Apstasia popping up that I would kill with Joe's Juice. Well about a year ago, I ran out of Joe's Juice and within about 6 months, my tank was overrun. And I mean overrun. Think Agent Smith at the end of Matrix Revolutions.

I've tried to keep the Apstasia at bay with injections of lemon juice and Joe's Juice, but the number of Apstasia have completely overwhelmed by ability to eliminate them. And I obviously can't go at them too often, because the pH of the tank will go haywire. There are literally hundreds, and they are on virtually every piece of Liverock. I've also got some nasty green macroalgea (long, fuzzy, hairy stuff) growing at alarming rates lately.

I have caught a second wind lately; I am finishing my basement with plans to move up to a 125 gallon built into a bar. Needless to say, I need to gain control of this situation and I don't know what to do. Right now, I'm considering the Nuclear option: boil every piece of liverock and re-cure it until every piece is free of all life. Considering that my tank is 5-6 years old, there's a lot of established bacteria on that live rock, so I would essentially be starting over. I am ok with this.

So I have a few questions:

#1: Does anyone have a better idea than killing off all the live rock? Is there any way my live rock can be saved or does it have to be converted to dead-rock first?

#2: If there is no other option, is boiling them the best way to kill this stuff?

#3: I obviously need to keep some means of biofiltration, so I would most likely do 1/3 of the rock, cure it, then do the next 1/3, cure it, and do the final 1/3, and cure it, so that my tank always has 2/3 of its rock capacity for biofiltration. Does this sound safe enough?

#4: The fuzzy algae has been problematic lately. Are there any good remedies to this? I JUST replaced all 4 of my T5-HO bulbs, and the fuzzy hair algae has run rampant!

Any other thoughts? Any and all advice is welcome. If you think I'm a complete idiot; as long as you have a better suggestion, by all means, tell me

 

[sasquatch]

NO WORRIES! you won't resolve this by nibbling around the edges, cooking in batches will just give you new small aiptasia's, look for a Filefish maybe? they love ap's and are quite interesting fish, HA is nutrient driven so reduce both Phos and N, when it changes color begin manual removal, (ps) Ive noticed HA blooms real good after cooking the rock too. Is your sandbed hooped too?

 

[jjmoneyman]

I'd hate to see you have to resort to a total nuke of the all the rock. There are critter out there that will eat them but of course that's hit or miss. I've got peppermints and have never found one in my tank, I consider myself lucky since all my LFS have them all over their tanks.

 

[ChrisOaty]

+1 to peppermints. i dropped one into my first tank when i had a few sprout up from a piece of liverock bought from my lfs. within days, not a trace of aptasia left. the problem with your 1/3 method is that it wont get rid of your aptasia. it will spread to the freshly cured bunch from the old 1/3 before you get it out to cure it.

 

[catran]

Get PaulB's zapper! And, guess what? It's fun to kill them. I have one and every once in a while, I see one pop up and all I have to do is touch it with the "needle" end and it just melts!

 

[seabass]

I did hear good things about that zapper never tried it myself.I had some coming up and got a pepermint shrimp and they where gone in a week and never seen another sence,but you need to make sure it is a peoermint shrimp and not a camel shrimp they look the same.

 

[sasquatch]

peppermints are fine on baby ap's but won't touch big ones, if you feed the tank and they eat... won't eat ap's

 

[Beach Girl]

I bought captive bred peppermints for my Aptasia and it was all gone over night. Never to return. But I also cu back on feeding for about 4 days to make sure the little guys were hungry. the problem with other methods is that is if you don't get all the Aptasia it will just make more. The more you annoy it the faster it spreads. The shrimp can get down there deep in the crevises of the rock and pull it out. I think boiling the rock is awfully extreme, with no certainty that it will work and possible a lot more hassle then it was worth. For the algae how about some algae eating nudi's for the tank. Maybe your fish store already has some and will let you "rent" a few. My blue legs did a number on my algae and I was growing it on purpose! Now I have none. As was stated watch your tank parameters. Your Nitrates and Phosphorus are being tied up in the algae so you may not notice it. You can beat this! Do not let it win! Good luck and we are all behind you. MAY THE FORCE BE WITH YOU! LOL

 

[KT535]

I had a copperband butterfly keep my aptasia undercontrol. Then it died and about 6 months later the aptasia started comming back. I tried 3 more copperbands but my tangs constantly harrassed them and they died. I then got a matted file fish. After about 2 weeks I noticed no more aptasia!! I've had him about 2 months now and he has been a model citizen! For hair algea, make sure your magnesium and alk are were they should be. If you have a sand bed, vacuum it clean!!! Take a power head and blow all the rocks to remove built up detritis and "dead" spots. Also add yellow tang and a foxface, they will help. Good luck!!

 

[cheeks69]

The reason you have a problem with aiptasia is the same reason why you have a problem with algae=excessive nutrients. Are you using a skimmer and if so which one ? How often are you feeding ? Are you adding any supplements ? How often are you doing water changes and what % ?

The Matted File fish is a good idea to deal with the aiptasia but he's difficult to find locally and could also nibble on your corals and eventually may have to be removed and the aiptasia could return, so dealing with the nutrient level should be your first concern IMHO.

 

[Lee]

The reason you have a problem with aiptasia is the same reason why you have a problem with algae=excessive nutrients. Are you using a skimmer and if so which one ? How often are you feeding ? Are you adding any supplements ? How often are you doing water changes and what % ?

I have a protein skimmer; its an Aqua C Remora. I feed like once every 2-3 days, and I'm feeding either a cube of frozen food, or sometimes that frozen red stick.. The name escapes me right now; comes in a red package and its like a dark red popsicle that you swirl around in the water. No suppliments. I do about a 25 gallon water change every 3 weeks or so... Its probably 1/3 of the total water in the system, maybe a little less. When I had large fish, I'd do weekly water changes, but now I only have 5 tiny fish in a 90 gallon tank with 200lbs of live rock and a sump, so the bio-load is like 90% from food and 10% from fish.

The Matted File fish is a good idea to deal with the aiptasia but he's difficult to find locally and could also nibble on your corals and eventually may have to be removed and the aiptasia could return, so dealing with the nutrient level should be your first concern IMHO.

Yeah I'm a little hesitant to employ a fish to do the removal work, because there are literally hundreds. I just don't see how any fish or shrimp is going to deal with this problem alone.

If you really think a fish or shrimp could do it, I'd consider trying it... I don't care if they nibble on the corals; they are overrunning the tank too! (speaking of which, does anybody want some torch coral? )

 

[Lee]

I bought captive bred peppermints for my Aptasia and it was all gone over night. Never to return. But I also cu back on feeding for about 4 days to make sure the little guys were hungry. the problem with other methods is that is if you don't get all the Aptasia it will just make more. The more you annoy it the faster it spreads. The shrimp can get down there deep in the crevises of the rock and pull it out. I think boiling the rock is awfully extreme, with no certainty that it will work and possible a lot more hassle then it was worth. For the algae how about some algae eating nudi's for the tank. Maybe your fish store already has some and will let you "rent" a few. My blue legs did a number on my algae and I was growing it on purpose! Now I have none. As was stated watch your tank parameters. Your Nitrates and Phosphorus are being tied up in the algae so you may not notice it. You can beat this! Do not let it win! Good luck and we are all behind you. MAY THE FORCE BE WITH YOU! LOL

My nitrate and phosphate levels have historically been pretty low, like 5ppm or less for nitrate and phosphates, well I haven't checked in a while, but the last time I had algae issues they were reading almost zero. Possibly because the algae was eating it all?

 

[Lee]

Get PaulB's zapper! And, guess what? It's fun to kill them. I have one and every once in a while, I see one pop up and all I have to do is touch it with the "needle" end and it just melts!

Gosh, I don't know... There are literally hundreds. It would take forever, not to mention, can you imagine the amount of dead organic stuff that would be in the tank after killing a bunch at a time?

 

[Lee]

Maybe I should buy another 100lbs of clean live rock, cure it, pull out all of my current live rock and replace it with the clean live rock. Then I can take my time with the contaminated live rock, boiling and curing it all

 

[Lee]

NO WORRIES! you won't resolve this by nibbling around the edges, cooking in batches will just give you new small aiptasia's, look for a Filefish maybe? they love ap's and are quite interesting fish, HA is nutrient driven so reduce both Phos and N, when it changes color begin manual removal, (ps) Ive noticed HA blooms real good after cooking the rock too. Is your sandbed hooped too?

I have like 1/2" of sand. Its all for looks, nothing more.

 

[sasquatch]

Cheeks makes a good point on excess nutrients, can you rehouse your fish? get 6 peppermints and just stop feeding the tank till its cleared up? and maybe you need to look at a remote dsb or bio pellets

 

[Lee]

Cheeks makes a good point on excess nutrients, can you rehouse your fish? get 6 peppermints and just stop feeding the tank till its cleared up? and maybe you need to look at a remote dsb or bio pellets

Rehousing would not be easy, it would require a far larger financial investment than simply buying another 50 lbs of rock and removing all the infested rock and killing it all off/re-curing.

I'm considering an acceleration of my new tank timetable in order to get on top of this problem. My basement won't be finished for another 6 months at the rate I'm going, and I don't want to look at this tank in its current state for this long, so I'm considering setting up the new tank downstairs sooner than later, purchasing new rock (which I will need anyway), and killing off the old rock and re-curing it all.

As you can see, I have too much of everything. I have about 50x too much torch coral, too many star polyps, too many mushrooms, too much algae, and too many apstasia

 

[sasquatch]

oh my lol, you know your going to have ap's in the colonies too right? tough call here, Id fight it into the ground if it were me but your the one's gotta live with it

 

[Lee]

oh my lol, you know your going to have ap's in the colonies too right? tough call here, Id fight it into the ground if it were me but your the one's gotta live with it

Yeah its bad. We're not talking about just a few here

What do you mean by "in the colonies?"

 

[catran]

He means it's on the branches of your frogspawn and mushroom colonies. Wow, that is bad. I would cook the big rocks that are covered with it and zap the colonies or use Aiptasia x on them, but that's just my opinion. I thought that was all star polyps or gsp. I have a little tan gsp, or I guess you would say tsp..