IKD
2500 Club Member
Great post. Maybe R2R should have a disclaimer on every post that says “The opinions expressed in this post are solely from the poster and in no way reflect the opinions of every other member on this forum.”to both of you.
I think one point OP is trying to make is, when you see 1 or 2 aiptasia in your tank. The thing to do is not FREAK OUT, and nuke your tank. He's not saying that you're wrong mdb_talon. But that there's more than 1 way to skin the cat.
When he said would you bomb your house, I think he literally meant, you see a cockroach in the bathroom, so you move everyone out the same day and throw an insect bomb in? Maybe you do, but surely the first time you studied on how to handle insects you probably looked at a lot more options than just bombing.
The OP's point mainly is that the proper thing to do is gather information, research, and make an informed decision for yourself on what you think is best. That may take a day or two. And what you decide on, may not be what everyone else wants to do. Maybe it is to bomb your house. But most likely there's other options too, and he wishes newer reefers would take a look and study a bit more at all the info.
If you think it's better to bomb your house, instead of laying cockroach traps around, finding the nest, and exterminating them like that. Then to each their own. There's 1,000,000 ways to skin a cat. But as long as you have studied at least 100,000 of the ways you'll feel better about the decision you're making. I think that's the main point the OP was trying to make.
Ripping a tank down with 2 Aiptasia and rebuilding it and throwing out the rock with aiptasia, boiling your rock, and sand, yeah that will 100% handle the aiptasia.
But like the OP says, 15 years ago, most reefers took painful years to get a mature tank, so the idea of doing something like that was absurd. A lot of reefers now-days are doing skip-cycles and instant bacto boosts. Along with that, the learning curve changed.
Going from starting a reef tank, to adding coral 1 year later, you have a lot of time to study, read and figure out information about reefing.
Now-a-days people are adding corals in weeks. And then trying to ram that same 1 year of info into a few threads on R2R.
There is something to be said that no matter how much you study and read and look at, nothing at all is exchangeable for 15-20 years of experience in a hobby.
To a lot of old salt heads, 1 or 2 aiptasia isn't even an eye blink. But there's so many other horror stories about it. including from some of the old salt heads.
It doesn't help when someone who's been reefing for 15 years posts a photo of one of their tanks overrun with aiptasia without giving the full backstory including their lazy and lackluster husbandry that led to that point.
So instead you end up with people thinking unless they kill it within 15 minutes, they're gonna have the same thing, when in reality it probably took months before major spreading even occurred.
Again, 1,000,000 to skin a cat. You don't have to agree on how to skin it. But I get the OP's point for sure.
I think if people posted threads with a lot more "This is what I did and it worked for me but there's other solutions"
Or "In my experience." Or "When I dealt with this" instead of jsut "This is what you should do" It gives a lot less of a "didactic I know best" attitude. When I don't think anyone on this forum (or at least 90%) are egotistical enough to think they know better than anyone else.
