Aiptasia Anemones

The rock that has 30 or so small one seem different. Here's a picture.
They are a different shape and more of a pale color.

 

pretty impressive collection you got there

 

Should I just pull the rock out now and cut my losses or is it too late and I may never get rid of them?
The guy who sold it to me said he has someone else that will buy it.
Or do I take each peice out and try to kill them? Some of them are coming out of deep wholes in the rock.
Please guys Im going nuts here.

 

relax man they aren't gonna destroy your tank they just take some effort to remove

 

I'm assuming you don't have a syringe.

So I would start buy taking out that big rock and pouring salt on the anemones and then using a flathead screwdriver to scrape them off.


Or if you have a syringe you can attempt to spray the bases with boilign water so they let go then net them out.

out you can inject them with kalk paste.
or you can inject them with joes juice(i think this is primarily lemon juice).

Then get two peppermints to clean up the left overs when your tank cycles.

 

Ok. So if you had a choice of pulling the rock out and selling it to the other guy who wants it (and he knows it has the aiptasia) or taking it out and trying to remove all the aiptasia what would you decision be?

I just spoke to the guy who sold it to me and he said if I get rid of as much as I can by hand and then add a couple peppermint shrimp it should be fine.. but he said it could come back down the road.

 

for the price you got the rock for I would keep the rock.

 

Yeah I was able to aquascape the 90 pretty nice with it.

Are they ok to touch? or should I try not to?

Heres a shot with just the actanics on.

 

yes but don't get it in your eye

 

id keep all the rock you have and just handle the aiptasia issue.

when i started i had 50lbs of base rock, but i got 30lbs of live rock from a pre-established FOWLR tank that was being shut down. he had aiptasia on a few, ok alot. i wound up taking all 30lbs of live rock and spent a full week 'nuking' the rock. (i can describe this procedure if you want or you can search the 3reef forums there are plenty of posts on how to do this in various ways)

seeing how fast aiptasia spread in a 10gal experiment tank i was doing before i started my full reef.... i dont mess with aiptasia, i kill it as fast as i can and without question.

if i were you and i had a tank with an assortment of base rock, live rock full of aiptasia, and perhaps some liverock that doesnt have aiptasia on it visually (may still have spores that have yet to spawn fully...) id take it all out and nuke it.

id put it all back in as base rock, as that'll be all it is after you nuke, and goto a trusted LFS get a couple pieces (maybe 10lbs) of "LIVE ROCK" and stick it in a QT for a week to make sure it has no aiptasia on it... and then put it into the display. over the next 3-4 months that live rock will start to spread its corraline, and whatever other algae's are on it to the nearing rocks and eventually it'll all be the same.

right now after 6 months of setting my tank up... all the rock is fully covered in corraline and such. i seeded mine the same way i described and it worked fine. i also seeded a whole ton of amphipod/copepod/rotifers as a suggestion from my LFS. this really helped with the initial startup. their population is crazy now and with the addition of the clean-up crew the tanks finally sparkling.

anyway, i hope my 'story' may help.