Treefer32
Valuable Member
I was planning to get a copperband from New Wave in Minneapolis (300 miles away from me) to help with my aitasia problem. I don't know if it would work or not, I've heard it's hit or miss. Well, it didn't work out. Long story short, the store had a parasite go through it's QT and killed all it's tangs. The copperband I was going to get was fine and still eating, but they wanted to keep it until it's been fully treated to ensure it's o.k. So, I deferred to that. Tired of staring at the thousands of aiptasia staring at me, daring me to try to eliminate them I took harsh members. There was a small 2 pound rock just covered in them. And there was nothing else on the rock just aiptasia. I laughed a maniacal laugh and said, you're so done! Gratification would be had even if I only wiped out a few hundred of their kind (not an over exageration at all of the number...)
I had picked up some pickling lime at the grocery story, filled a clean gallon bucket less than half full of RODI water, and added a crap ton of pickling lime (around 2 cups). I mixed it up really well, it wasn't a paste, but it was more like a syrup.
So, I took the infested rock out and placed it into the gallon bucket. The rock was 3/4 covered with the slurry and it sizzled... Sizzled..... Heh. Maniacal hysteria ensued. Genocide never felt so amazing! Carefully I rotated the rock not wanting to get the blood of my enemies on my hands. I used a tongs and flipped the sucker... More sizzling! Pure enjoyment ensued as more sizzling occured.
I let the rock sit for 5-10 minutes in the slurry, rotating it every couple of minutes. Ecstasy filled me as I realized, I had one, I had committed genocide... On a single rock. YES! I looked at the tank and all their little happy heads sticking out of my sand bed, I wanted to cry, but, 1 2 pound rock done. . . only another 100 lbs of rock to go, many of them do have corals epoxied onto them. . . It's a 350 gallon display. 6 foot long by 3 feet wide. It's a lot of space for thousands of the things to populate.
I realized the satisfaction was not there of just killing one rock... After soaking the rock in Kalk water for a bit, with glee I put the cleaned rock back in the tank. More sizzling occured as the kalkwater precipated off the rock. I thought with around 300 gallons of water volume. One rock wouldn't really affect the chemistry too much, but it was a pretty display as the local concentrations of Calcium and alk were too high in the area and a nice column of particles bubbled off the rock as I put it back in. I placed it then, saw all the aunts, uncles, cousins, brothers, sisters, and Henry, all staring at me. They spoke, in their native tongue, when using the google translater they said.. "Now it's war, You think we're a small army now, just you wait! In a day, I'll be 10,000 then 100,000, then a million, you will not win."
I realized, they were right, but that didn't stop me, no, I was motivated on a boring Sunday afternoon. I wielded my turkey baster with zeal. "I don't care how many you are! I shall destroy all of you. One at a time if I must." I filled the turkey baster, and I went to work, hysterically I attacked with little regard for anything but the battle. I did avoid my corals as much as I could. Though a hammer got a little mad at me. I'm hoping it wasn't collateral damage, but, it's two main heads were good Just a couple new ones were mad. I apologized to the friendlies and said I need to attack. I'm sorry.. And without further ado, I attacked as many areas of aiptasia as I could on the right half of my tank. Pasting it the best I could paste a slurry of kalk water syrup onto rocks with a turkey baster. My eyes filled with rage as I blasted the suckers!
I had to stop myself. Enough is enough. The chemical warfare was great! But, there could be casualties. I couldn't kill my fish and corals over an infestation that would not be eliminated with one 10 minute battle with a turkey baster. I stopped myself. Pulling my turkey baster arm out of the water and said to me. "It's ok, it was a glorious fight, we must save our strength for another day. "
With sudden shock and concern and care for my livestock, I got my rage under control, managed my breathing and went into damage control. My apex showed my PH rising rapidly. It was going up by .01 every 10 seconds. When I checked it it was at 8.30 and rising. I watched it for several minutes as the display water populated my sump and as it did it got to my PH probe and continued rising. 8.4 was hit.. And it continued to rise. 8.41..... 8.42...... 8.43..... Oh crap! My fish looked agitated (not hurt, just irritated) my dragon wrasse was seen taking cover, he didn't like the war. He buried himself in the sand bed and under a couple rocks. I can always tell the status of things by my very emo foxface. He was mad. Colors were changing, fins were flaring. He told me the battle was great, but it's time to do some damage control.
I had a batch of 1.026 reef crystals mixed up about 20-30 gallons was all that was left from the water change I had done Friday (routine water change). PH - 8.45. . . . .It was slowing but it hit 8.47. Crap! I opened the valve to pump out water. I drained the return section of my sump until it was gurgling water. And then filled the sump back up quickly. Based on the measure of my water tanks it was about 25 gallons out of 350. Rapidly the apex showed the PH dropping! YAAY! The tank was cloudy from all the precipitate. The PH dropped down to 8.35. Whew... O.k. now waiting with much abated breadth would it rise again? As the fresh saltwater mixed with tank water, I watched waiting and it started rising again every 30 to 60 seconds. It capped out at 8.40. . . This morning it's 8.03. Apex shows a rapid decline from 8.4 to 8.03 from 4:30 pm and it bottomed out at 3:45 am this morning and starting it's routine rise now.
I am dosing CaCL and Baked Soda Ash. 150 ml a day. So, I'm hoping my Ca and Alk didn't crash completely with the precipitation that occured but everything is was fine as of last night and the most amazing thing? The tank water looked so clear and clean after all this, it was amazing. (I did wash a lot of the Cyano that had started growing again) and after it was all said and done, I think it's ever looked that nice.
I'll have to use some vinegar to balance out the Kalk if I wage another battle. This war is not DONE!
I'm hoping the corals didn't mind the PH Spike and then the swing after words. 12 hours should have been a slow enough decline I hope. . . . (PH was around 8.25 when I started.. So it wasn't a huge jump either).
So, how much Kalk water slurry can I use per day to destroy these things? Like 1-2 cups and that's it? Or do I need to mix it thicker so it's more of a paste. Many of these rocks I can't remove, it would destroy my scaping. I'm open to suggestions!
I had picked up some pickling lime at the grocery story, filled a clean gallon bucket less than half full of RODI water, and added a crap ton of pickling lime (around 2 cups). I mixed it up really well, it wasn't a paste, but it was more like a syrup.
So, I took the infested rock out and placed it into the gallon bucket. The rock was 3/4 covered with the slurry and it sizzled... Sizzled..... Heh. Maniacal hysteria ensued. Genocide never felt so amazing! Carefully I rotated the rock not wanting to get the blood of my enemies on my hands. I used a tongs and flipped the sucker... More sizzling! Pure enjoyment ensued as more sizzling occured.
I let the rock sit for 5-10 minutes in the slurry, rotating it every couple of minutes. Ecstasy filled me as I realized, I had one, I had committed genocide... On a single rock. YES! I looked at the tank and all their little happy heads sticking out of my sand bed, I wanted to cry, but, 1 2 pound rock done. . . only another 100 lbs of rock to go, many of them do have corals epoxied onto them. . . It's a 350 gallon display. 6 foot long by 3 feet wide. It's a lot of space for thousands of the things to populate.
I realized the satisfaction was not there of just killing one rock... After soaking the rock in Kalk water for a bit, with glee I put the cleaned rock back in the tank. More sizzling occured as the kalkwater precipated off the rock. I thought with around 300 gallons of water volume. One rock wouldn't really affect the chemistry too much, but it was a pretty display as the local concentrations of Calcium and alk were too high in the area and a nice column of particles bubbled off the rock as I put it back in. I placed it then, saw all the aunts, uncles, cousins, brothers, sisters, and Henry, all staring at me. They spoke, in their native tongue, when using the google translater they said.. "Now it's war, You think we're a small army now, just you wait! In a day, I'll be 10,000 then 100,000, then a million, you will not win."
I realized, they were right, but that didn't stop me, no, I was motivated on a boring Sunday afternoon. I wielded my turkey baster with zeal. "I don't care how many you are! I shall destroy all of you. One at a time if I must." I filled the turkey baster, and I went to work, hysterically I attacked with little regard for anything but the battle. I did avoid my corals as much as I could. Though a hammer got a little mad at me. I'm hoping it wasn't collateral damage, but, it's two main heads were good Just a couple new ones were mad. I apologized to the friendlies and said I need to attack. I'm sorry.. And without further ado, I attacked as many areas of aiptasia as I could on the right half of my tank. Pasting it the best I could paste a slurry of kalk water syrup onto rocks with a turkey baster. My eyes filled with rage as I blasted the suckers!
I had to stop myself. Enough is enough. The chemical warfare was great! But, there could be casualties. I couldn't kill my fish and corals over an infestation that would not be eliminated with one 10 minute battle with a turkey baster. I stopped myself. Pulling my turkey baster arm out of the water and said to me. "It's ok, it was a glorious fight, we must save our strength for another day. "
With sudden shock and concern and care for my livestock, I got my rage under control, managed my breathing and went into damage control. My apex showed my PH rising rapidly. It was going up by .01 every 10 seconds. When I checked it it was at 8.30 and rising. I watched it for several minutes as the display water populated my sump and as it did it got to my PH probe and continued rising. 8.4 was hit.. And it continued to rise. 8.41..... 8.42...... 8.43..... Oh crap! My fish looked agitated (not hurt, just irritated) my dragon wrasse was seen taking cover, he didn't like the war. He buried himself in the sand bed and under a couple rocks. I can always tell the status of things by my very emo foxface. He was mad. Colors were changing, fins were flaring. He told me the battle was great, but it's time to do some damage control.
I had a batch of 1.026 reef crystals mixed up about 20-30 gallons was all that was left from the water change I had done Friday (routine water change). PH - 8.45. . . . .It was slowing but it hit 8.47. Crap! I opened the valve to pump out water. I drained the return section of my sump until it was gurgling water. And then filled the sump back up quickly. Based on the measure of my water tanks it was about 25 gallons out of 350. Rapidly the apex showed the PH dropping! YAAY! The tank was cloudy from all the precipitate. The PH dropped down to 8.35. Whew... O.k. now waiting with much abated breadth would it rise again? As the fresh saltwater mixed with tank water, I watched waiting and it started rising again every 30 to 60 seconds. It capped out at 8.40. . . This morning it's 8.03. Apex shows a rapid decline from 8.4 to 8.03 from 4:30 pm and it bottomed out at 3:45 am this morning and starting it's routine rise now.
I am dosing CaCL and Baked Soda Ash. 150 ml a day. So, I'm hoping my Ca and Alk didn't crash completely with the precipitation that occured but everything is was fine as of last night and the most amazing thing? The tank water looked so clear and clean after all this, it was amazing. (I did wash a lot of the Cyano that had started growing again) and after it was all said and done, I think it's ever looked that nice.
I'll have to use some vinegar to balance out the Kalk if I wage another battle. This war is not DONE!
I'm hoping the corals didn't mind the PH Spike and then the swing after words. 12 hours should have been a slow enough decline I hope. . . . (PH was around 8.25 when I started.. So it wasn't a huge jump either).
So, how much Kalk water slurry can I use per day to destroy these things? Like 1-2 cups and that's it? Or do I need to mix it thicker so it's more of a paste. Many of these rocks I can't remove, it would destroy my scaping. I'm open to suggestions!
