When to dry it out (lots of progression pics)

littlebigreef · Jul 20, 2022

I made two structures to hold my corals back in 2012. They've been with me through three moves and 4 different aquariums (I set up a new tank before each time I've moved). It goes without staying they've changed substantially over the years. Corals have grown out, encrusted, died, parts of the rock themselves have broken apart. At one point I was in a 75gal so I placed the arch in the sump simply for a lack of space. I most recently moved in spring of '21. During that time I concentrated my effort of my trough and worried less about the display. As expected I lost some sps which had encrusted. Finally I decided to pull my arch piece and air dry it due to vermitids, aiptasia, etc. I put that back into the system in early May of this year. I'm now contemplating pulling my (vaguely) mushroom-shaped structure and air drying it as well. Bumble bee snails have the vermitids mostly in check. I'm growing berghia for the aiptasia. But, the structure has become largely encrusted with psamacora and the most stubborn encrusting pavona I've ever encountered. They're currently fighting it out much to my amusement. I've kalk pasted this pavona about 1/2 dozen times at this point. The piece has never air dried. I'm not terribly concerned about the die off etc. I can manage all of that. But it begs the question, at what point should I pull and air dry it vs sticking it in the brute can without the lights?

Thoughts- feelings- opinions?

Here's the progression of the two pieces over the last decade.

120 Oceanic 2012-2014/2015

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75 gal winter 2015- winter 2016

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220 gal Winter 2016-spring 2021

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125 gal spring 2021- Current

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KrisReef · Jul 20, 2022

How about putting it in the Brute and topping off with salt until the encrusting corals and aptasia, etc have perished from elevated salinity? I am curious if the bacteria would survive at elevated salinity above what the macro-life can?

Cheap experiment with zero controls but it might provide an interesting data point.

By the way, I am thinking that the suggestion to kill animals is a violation of the service agreement, based upon a recent locked thread I was party to.

littlebigreef · Jul 20, 2022

KrisReef said:
How about putting it in the Brute and topping off with salt until the encrusting corals and aptasia, etc have perished from elevated salinity? I am curious if the bacteria would survive at elevated salinity above what the macro-life can?

Cheap experiment with zero controls but it might provide an interesting data point.

By the way, I am thinking that the suggestion to kill animals is a violation of the service agreement, based upon a recent locked thread I was party to.

Going hypo or hyper saline is an interesting option.

I had a look at that link. Seems like an overreaction in my opinion. Managing nuisance animals is part of the hobby and I didn’t seen anything egregious in that post to warrant the locking.

Thanks for the input!