Ten Gallon Reef

what lights do yu have on ther? you might of already said it i just didnt catch

 

no problem bud. Coralife 20 inch 50/50 96 watt compact fluorescent fixture, not the best but that's what I got to work with right now. I will be moving up with LEDs shortly. ;D

 

i started off with pc's theyre good for softy tanks. led's is a great option imo

 

I got an idea, I want to bounce it off you guys to see what everybody thinks. This aipastia problem is driving me crazy. I was thinking boiling water thing has killed a few, but not very affective. It only works on the ones close to the surface for whatever reason. Well my idea is to take some of the rock (most affected) out of the water, and heat up some piece of metal till its red hot then touch the aipastia. I will have a bucket full of water, same water as the DTs, to wash the rock off before putting back into the DT. Anybody think this will help? or even work?

 

i would just use a lighter insted of the metal. you dont want any bad metal residue on the rock coming off of the metal. but if your going to do all that just boil the whole rock,

 

I would, but there is coral on that rock.

 

In a small tank, Joes juice should do wonders. Peppermint shrimp should help too, but you need a lot, they don't seem to eat aptaisia if you only have a few. Not sure why, maybe they only go after the aptaisia if there is competition for other food. Also, you may need to cut back on feeding quite a bit to get them to eat the aptaisia. Seems better than potentially killing rock though. The nudis aren't helping?

 

They are helping, but don't seem to touch the large ones. Relying on just them is extremely slow. I think joe's juice may hurt them, i am just trying hot water and a tiny bit of lemon juice to kill the big ones. Just trying to help them out. I am only killing the large ones and maybe a few small ones that are close to the large ones. I actually had to two peppermints in the very beginning, my pistol shrimp killed both of them. I wish I could just nuke the whole tank and start over honestly. I made the mistake a long while ago buying live rock and not dipping my corals. If I were to build another tank, I would use all dead rocks. You live and learn I guess.

 

Using all dead rock may help some, but they still get in. The key is killing them immediately and not letting them get a foothold. My 75 is around 9.5 years old and was started with 100% dead rock. I transferred it to a new reefkeeper recently and she did not keep up with them. I stopped by and the tank had hundreds of them everywhere. We have been doing a few Joe's juice treatments a week and added 10 peppermint shrimp and now a month or so latter, they seem to be gone. Now there is a bit of cyano, probably from the die-off, but I'm not worried about that, it's just another part of reefkeeping. People try everything to avoid nuisances, but they are mostly unsuccessful IMO. Just too many ways for things to sneak in. Luckily, most problems have a solution, I haven't encountered one yet that required tearing down my tank )know on wood).

 

Very true. Most of these little guys came from a single one, I had in my 3 gallon in 2007. I thought all of them were gone. It was hiding in a crack, I am guessing. I moved all the rock over to the 10 gallon around 8 or so months ago. They exploded into the problem I have now. I should have gone a different route in the beginning, joes or aipastia-x. I, however, took the natural route with the little nudibranches. Once, they are in control they will keep the aipastia away. I hope I don't have a tear down problem either. I am so much of a perfectionist, so I have a terrible time at just letting it go. If there is a problem, I want it fixed right away. ha I know most things don't work like that.