3 year old biocube recovering from crash, Small Aiptasia Bloom

[jeremycee]

My biocube 14g has been through 3 moves over the past 3 years and has recently recovered for a minor crash i believe to be due to die off during the move. I lost mostly corals and had to quarantine my yellow watchman goby and pistol, (which are living happily in my biocube again). All of my mushrooms survived and maybe 3-4 polyps of my yellow star polyps colony are left.

 

Everything has settled the past month or so and its starting to look very clean again. Although, Ive noticed tons and tons of very small aiptasia growing all over the sand-bed and some bigger ones on all of my really beautiful live rock pieces. I would hate to start over since I've spent the last 3 months battling to get my tank on track again.

 

I'm asking for your help on this one guys, Ive battled aiptasia in the past but nowhere on this scale. Does anyone have any advice they can share? I would really appreciate any feedback from all of you.

 

Ive attached a link to a video i recorded of my current tank status.

 

 

You can see a lot of the tiny ones on the sandbed and a nice handful of larger ones scattered in and around some of the rock work. I blasted some of the larger ones with lemon juice and that seemed to do the trick but also melted some into smaller pieces and i think thats where the ones on the sandbed are coming from. Also tried peppermint shrimp but i think my pistol might have killed the 3 i put in there within the first week of introducing them. They've gone totally missing and their bodies were m.i.a.

 

 

[jeremycee]

:-( bump?

[RollaJase]

By the looks of things you probably had one or two before the move and the crash caused them to spawn in relation to a temp swing or unfavorable water conditions as they tried to prolong hte life of the strain.

 

For the ones growing on the sand I have always used a turkey baster to suck them up and spit them down the sink. For the ones on the rocks I have found that a kalk based product (Aiptasia RX for example) works the best. You have to make sure that you get some in their oral disk and it will kill them from the inside out. Other alternative is to take out the rocks infected and cook them in acid to kill all organic life or remove the rock and use a blow torch or lighter to burn them off.

[jeremycee]

Thanks that turkey baster idea is brilliant! Gonna try that first thing in the morning. As for the Aiptasia rx, can I alternatively use lemon juice since lemon juice has a high ph or is the Aiptasia rx supposed to be safer for my current water quality?

[RollaJase]

Lemon juice, white vinegar or boiling water are suitable alternatives. Go to your local pharmacy and see if they will give you any hyperdermic needles, they looked at me funnily when I told them what it was for. You will need to inject the juice, vinegar or boiling water diretly into the aiptasia's body, aim for the oral disk. Simply blasting them with the solution is not as effective as injecting them with it. Lemon juice and vinegar can play havok with your PH and it is reccomended that you only use these before a water change. Kalk based products can affect your Alk and usually have a daily dosage guideline. I have found the kalk based products to work more effectively purely because once they injest some of the paste you can incase them in the paste and have a two pronged attack on them.

[jeremycee]

Kalk paste it is. I'll give it a shot thanks! Wish me luck, I'm not gonna let this things win against me!