Need help cleaning out tank fast

[ApoIsland]

In my experience the natural fish/predator way of ridding aiptasia only works long term if those fish/predators remain in your tank. I had an outbreak in my sump that was eaten down by a file fish and then subsequently also a copper banded butterfly. 3-6 months after I moved the fish to the display tank the aiptasia started reappearing in the sump in the exact same locations. The fish cannot rip the entire aiptasia out of those holes and the aiptasia can survive holed up like that for many months and possibly many years.

I have never tried the screwdriver / dental tool method (I will next time though) so I can't comment on that. It seems like it could be a little bit of a chore to me though with all the ones you have. If you give a test run and don't mind doing that then Brandon's rip clean is the way to go. Personally, since there doesn't appear to be much in the way of coral or fish I would just bleach the crap out of those rocks, clean the sand, and start over.

 

[Blackice]

I cannot thank you guys enough. I have been working nonstop since I heard of the rip clean and now I cannot find one last one! My clownfish looks happy and my tank looks so much better! Thanks so much!

 

[Fishbird]

I’m not saying the pick/screwdriver method won’t work, but @Blackice_Tom just know that if any cells of Aiptasia are left on the rock, they will regrow into a full sized anemone. You obviously can’t see a few cels with the naked eye so you’ll have to fully chip off the top layer of rock where every Aiptasia has its foot.

 

[Mechagodzilla]

I’m battling aptasia right now in my 30 gallon. I started with lemon juice on the large ones and sucking them up with a turkey baster. I then added 2 peppermint shrimp and let them go at the rest of them for weeks (make sure to identify the shrimp properly to get the right ones). My shrimp are a pretty good size. They are doing a great job (even though I don’t see them in the day, but I know they working because I can’t find any more Aptasia. I know they could mess with some corals a little, but I’m okay with that (they will take a polyp here and there). I heard aptasia never really goes away once’s introduced, it’s not like you could go through every single inch of every rock.

 

[brandon429]

BT

What we are doing is ridding the tank of the obvious ones, and actually cleaning sand vs leaving it in place so that as you lift out rocks for second follow up nothing clouds. You are ideally re aligning your tank for future access, and in a few passes every last one will be gone and they wont come back until you import more new ones.

*creativity wins

after rasping, what law would be broken if you shot flame from a windproof blue jet flame lighter over the same spot for cell cleanup? no law I have done that and it works great. Live rock doesnt conduct heat whatsoever, its amazing actually.

if you work the rocks but dont clean out the sand and change water the tank reset isnt really in place, it'll develop cyano or other invasions from the waste being upwelled and mixed during rock repositioning.

Official Sand Rinse and Tank Transfer thread

If you are reading this thread to cure a tank invasion from a link I sent you, we do not need to identify your type of invasion here we do not need you to test anything at anytime regarding nitrate, phosphate etc Above all, we do not need to see a microscope slide picture of your invasion at...

www.reef2reef.com

 

[andrewey]

@Fishbird knows his aiptasia reproduction It's why you'll see in my first post that you will have to continue to do manual removal many times to rid them and why a single episode fails to understand aiptasia asexual reproduction.

 

[Fishbird]

@andrewey thanks! But I’m not a “he”

@brandon429 I don’t know what “BT” means but also, I didn’t know that your Aiptasia removal protocol included running a blow torch over all the places on the rocks where they were. I agree that using a blow torch, as long as you got every spot/were able to get the heat into holes where Aiptasia often have their feet, that would probably help get rid of them!

I don’t understand what you mean when you say that resetting the sand so that nothing clouds will help with Aiptasia. Aiptasia can regenerate from a few cells. If/when they reappear in the tank (unless the entire outer layer of rock has been chipped off or perhaps the entire rock has been treated with a blowtorch) it’s because they’ve regrown from microscopic bits of tissue left behind by the screwdriver.

As this paper shows, even under conditions of extreme starvation Aiptasia can develop a different phenotype but they do not die off. When nutrient levels are allowed to rise the Aiptasia develop tentacles.

Nutrient stress arrests tentacle growth in the coral model Aiptasia - Symbiosis

The symbiosis between cnidarians and dinoflagellate algae of the family Symbiodiniaceae builds the foundation of coral reef ecosystems. The sea anemone Aiptasia is an emerging model organism promising to advance our functional understanding of this symbiotic association. Here, we report the...

link.springer.com

 

[brandon429]

All sand work details recommended are in the thread edited in above. Anything someone claims can be debated, but 35 pages of work are helpful patterns with their own testimony. cleaning out sandbeds with tap water did all those rebuilds we collect

all the sandbed masters, book authors, would hate that idea


regarding aiptasia it does no good to dissect a method until it’s ran. Once we get pics here of no aiptasia then we can begin critique

nobody said one pass would fix months of allowed growth, I just said this way is best for a nano bc we make your tank cloudless accessible, right now it’s filthy inaccessible.



its important not to follow the masses in reefing in my opinion. the masses won’t test claims in work threads, it allows forums to promote info that invades tanks vs uninvades them.


detective work recommended: go to nano-reef.com and read the recent five pages of tanks in the picos forum. All threads, first five pages.

take note of how many aiptasia problems or dinos or gha or invasive cyano can you find

now pick any standard size reef forum and list the cyano, gha, and aiptasia problems just on first 2 pages

the difference is access, pico reefers won’t entertain the same guests large tankers love entertaining. It’s not just because picos are physically easy to access; it’s that their keepers are willing to access...willingness is the real difference.

 

[Fishbird]

I’m not sure why you’re acting like I’m arguing with you. You said to take care of Aiptasia, scoop it out and rasp it with a screwdriver and dental pick. To me “take care of” means “the problem will now be gone and I won’t have to do this process continually” and since the OP has a lot of Aiptasia, I wanted to make sure it was clear that the rasping was very important and I wanted the OP to be able to make an informed choice about whether they’d be able to rasp/file away an entire layer under where each Aiptasia had its foot.

I agree with you about rip cleaning for algae, and I’ve never challenged that method here or in another thread.

To suggest that we don’t know how Aiptasia reproduces (which is what it seems like you’re doing when you say I can’t question until I’ve tried a method)...well, I stopped counting after I got to a few hundred peer reviewed papers on the subject (you can do a search in google scholar, and, google scholar won’t turn up all the literature that exists) so I do flatly disagree that 35 pages of a thread that is at least partly about algae eradication is more powerful than hundreds/thousands of studies. But that’s the only point we seem to disagree on.

 

[brandon429]

Op appears to have started the rasping removal / the best we can do is track its outcome if updates are posted. His thread title asked for ways to clean a tank out quickly, the only thing left is the implementation / final clean pic


some areas will be missed / have an aiptasia. simply lift/ repeat and you’ll have them permanently beaten quickly. For once it’d be nice to track a manual aiptasia total controlled removal among all the partial actions taken for the issue. We need examples other than pico reefs of willing transformation of the tank, vs any form of wait or delay. I always found it ironic that the more rules broken, the better pico reefs run, and larger reefs can make use of the direct action sequence.


all forms of concern for leftover cells, mass regrowth, risk, that’s the ongoing clash between pico reef method (fears nothing, five pages no invasions) and large tank method (can be invaded at any given moment leading to a takedown, no ten tanks use same method, invasion results vary constantly, must always buy something to fix an invasion, reactive vs proactive etc)


theres no harm in pointing out segments of the hobby who think aiptasia are the easiest, not toughest, invaders to beat and considering their method. It’s not to argue it’s to highlight a method not covered here, with the patterns inspectable to support the work or deny it.

if leftover cells mattered in a cloudless tank willing to rasp an outlier or three, pico reefs would have aiptasia problems. But we’ve none.

Jon Malkerson is not included in my lumping of large tanker behaviors lol for obvious reasons

 

[andrewey]

@brandon429 I think the best we can do is provide accurate information and let the OP make informed decisions for themselves. I think it would be irresponsible to suggest manual removal is likely to work the first time any more than it would be responsible to suggest once an anemone is placed in a tank, it won't move. I think we do a disservice by suggesting our pet theories have the same weight as validated information and as a reefer I would like to know the true pros and cons of the different options and make an informed decision myself based on the best validated scientific studies available. When that's not available, the best observational studies. When that's not available, the best anecdotal evidence. When that's not available, the best theories based on sound logic or reasoning. I don't think you've provided the OP with any of those and Fishbird is simply abiding by the golden rule- they are providing the OP the information they would want to have in dealing with an issue. By simply stating that the best we can do now is to simply track what happens, you have removal any responsibility for the information you have provided and unwittingly made the OP into a test subject without informed consent.

Thankfully, in this case the consequences are not that bad. Some of the aiptasia will reproduce over time and the OP will likely have to either manually remove again or move to a different solution. However, I write this all in the hopes that you understand that the goal of this forum is to help others, not unwittingly amass test subjects to "buck the system".

In the future, you are free to share your theories about screwdrivers and dental picks. I'm not trying to silence you. But you need to put them in context of other options, pros/cons, and likelihood of success. It would be no different than someone giving information to dose a particular chemical into their tank. You should always ensure the advice you are giving is couched in the listener understanding the hazards, alternatives, and likely consequences. If you don't understand their likelihood of success in this particular methodology, I or Fishbird would be more than happy to explain aiptasia reproduction to you.

@Fishbird- sorry about the assumption of gender! My apologies and it's something I'll be more diligent on working on.

 

[Amstar]

With it being a small tank, probably easier to remove the rock and replace.

You can also take the rock out and treat it with hypo salinity. Drop the salinity down to about 1.05 in a bucket of saltwater and drop the rock in. this will not kill off all the good bacteria but will kill off the apaistias, should only take about 24 hours. I put a heater and power head in the bucket

 

[brandon429]

If they do a bleaching do over then large tankers will lose an important lesson. BTom I sure hope you whip command this tank into shape, pico reef style yesterday- with skip cycle reassembly. Show how you make your own rules when youre good n ready.


not once in history did a large tanker wake up one day to an aiptasia invasion, they saw the first one and chose inaction or partial action (injections in-tank)

It’s possible to fix that without a do over and it’s easy for a smaller tank. We do the polar opposite of what most large tank owners would do.

 

[andrewey]

With it being a small tank, probably easier to remove the rock and replace.

You can also take the rock out and treat it with hypo salinity. Drop the salinity down to about 1.05 in a bucket of saltwater and drop the rock in. this will not kill off all the good bacteria but will kill off the apaistias, should only take about 24 hours. I put a heater and power head in the bucket

You're absolutely right about the nitrifying bacteria not being harmed ,(other inhabitants on the rock will likely perish) but in tests I've conducted, aiptasia were able to survive pure RO water for 24 hours. Similar results have been reported on RC if you search through "hyposalinity and aiptasia". I'm not saying it won't work (it may well for a particular species of aiptasia), but just wanted to let you know there's a chance the aiptasia aren't phased by the 1.05.

 

[brandon429]

Updates pics