Something kind of unbelievable (Aiptasia)

[MaxTremors]

Okay, so I noticed something truly mind blowing today. A little history: I’ve been keeping reef tanks for over twenty years, but was without a tank for roughly two years until Jan of this year. In Jan I set up a new Nanocube and it’s been going pretty great. I used probably 2/3 dry rock and 1/3 live rock. So far as I can tell I have no aiptasia, haven’t seen a single one. So when I set up the tank back in Jan, I had some old Tonga branch live rock that’s been sitting dry in a box in my garage for at least 10 years, and I thought I might want to use some of it, so I scrubbed it clean and put it in a bucket of saltwater with a powerhead to cure it or let any organic matter decay off it and let anything leach out. And there it sat for 3-4 months.

So today, I decided I was going to either get rid of it or use it, so I opened the bucket and picked out one piece I decided I was going to use (it was basically bleached white at this point), the rest I laid out on a towel on my back porch to dry out. So the piece I wanted to use I rinsed pretty thoroughly in RO/DI, and put it in the tank. I sat and watched the tank for probably 20 minutes, and when I stood up, I looked at the side of the tank where this new piece of rock was (on the side in the back). And I couldn’t believe it. There was a tiny little aiptasia growing on this piece of 10 year old rock!

I have no idea how this is even possible, there’s no way one grew on it in 20 minutes, and I don’t have any aiptasia in my tank anyway. There were aiptasia in the tank it was from (but like I said, it sat dry for 10 years). I’m really perplexed and kind of amazed. Is it possible for aiptasia (or their spores) to survive dry for that long?

I haven’t removed it yet, and the lights are off now, but I will get a pic tomorrow before I remove it. But has anyone ever had something like this happen?

 

[BeltedCoyote]

It’s amazing how durable they are!

 

[Screwgunner]

Just can not kill them . But one little file fish and your problems are gone.

 

[tehmadreefer]

Fake story as it’s absolutely impossible for an aiptasia to live for 10 years dried out. Additionally nor would any “egg” or piece of aiptasia, it’s literally impossible and the dried up salt residue alone from the initial taking out of the tank would have pulled everything bit of moisture out.

 

[Townes_Van_Camp]

Encapsulate it in super glue gel now. Completely covered. It will die.

 

[MaxTremors]

Fake story as it’s absolutely impossible for an aiptasia to live for 10 years dried out. Additionally nor would any “egg” or piece of aiptasia, it’s literally impossible and the dried up salt residue alone from the initial taking out of the tank would have pulled everything bit of moisture out.

Has it finally happened?!? Am I finally fake news?!?

Look, I’m not making any claims as to where it came from, and I don’t really care if you believe my ‘story’ is fake. I only stated what happened and what I observed and asked if anyone had any ideas as to what could’ve happened.

One other remote possibility (something I didn’t think about at the time, even though it still seems implausible) is that I put a power head that had been in the tank with the live rock (that doesn’t have any aiptasia) into the bucket with the dead rock a few weeks before I put the piece of dead rock into the tank (and noticed the aiptasia). I don’t think that’s where it came from, the powerhead was out of water for a couple days and was dry, and plus, as stated, there aren’t any aiptasia in the tank that it was in, but something implausible clearly happened, so I can’t rule that out.

I can’t explain what happened, which is why I posted and asked if anyone knew if it was possible. But yeah, totally fake.