What's growing???

[auntynatal]

Any clues as to what these are? They've sprouted up all over the place.









And what is this green stuff?



For those who remember my other posts, my last fish died about a week later and my anemone disintergrated All I have left is some xenia, a couple of corals, 2 cleaner shrimp, one boxing shrimp, 2 giant snails and lots of crabs.

I had more snails but my crabs keep eating them.

Heartily fed up of killing things and everything in me wants to give up!

[papagimp]

Oh bummer, those are aptasia anemone's. Not a good addition to your tank. Joe's Juice can help rid the tank of them. They're other options as well, i'm sure those who've used them will chime in.

green stuff looks like algae to me.

[BigScott]

correct me if im wrong first an third pics look like aptasia..

scott

[scowiii]

the first ones are aptasia.

[papagimp]

Originally posted by bigScott
correct me if im wrong first an third pics look like aptasia..

scott

1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th are aptasia's

[a2fire2i]

i had a problem with it in my tank and added a peppermint shrimp which took care of it!

[auntynatal]

I knew you would know here! Why are they bad? Can I just pick them out?

[papagimp]

YOu can pick em out, they'll regrow though. Any little bit of aptasia that you miss (and you will miss some) will regrow a new anemone in no time at all. They are extremely potent stingers and will walk around infesting the tank and stinging/killing other corals. You want them out of the tank, trust me. Bergia nudi's are known to eat them, exclusively though, peppermint shrimps can help sometimes, a pearlscale butterfly may also eat them. I don't want shrimp or another pearlscale in my tank so i juice em, even kalkwasser paste can kill em, vinegar injected into them, stuff like that.

Don't fret too much over them though, most if not all of us have had them at some point, i currently have a 75g getting overrun and have been going to town with the joe's juice.

[cartman5579]

Yeah, try it.....but i'm sure that it will retract as soon as you try and touch it!! And even if you do tear it out. It will probably grow back.

JOES JUICE did it for me!

[marduc]

If you cannot find joe's juice in the UK, a paste of Kalk (lime) a bit of water, and a syringe can be used to kill them. Aiptasia are a common nuisance, search around a ton of info on them.

The second pic is algae of some sort, manually remove all that you can, if you have had die offs recently it is even more imperative to routinely do water changes with pure (RO/DI preferably) water, maybe even doing so aggressively for a while (>20% weekly) to get nutrients in check and gradually starve off what algea does not get removed manually or grazed from what clean up crew you have.


Take it slow and easy, don't add any new livestock for a bit until things get stabilized. Unfortunately although very common to newbies in this hobby anenomes are very poor choices for addition to a tank, esp. a new just settling in.

[papagimp]

fwiw, at about 3 months, expect lot's of algae in the tank. All new tanks go through it (for the most part) and with proper maintance, and general care the algae should die back as it consumes it's food sources. Careful not to overfeed, keep nitrates and phosphate in check (0ppm) to reduce the likelyhood of an algae outbreak.

[auntynatal]

I have no intentions of putting any more fish in til way after Christmas. It has been a horrific month! And no more anemones!

I will see my LFS for some RO water, does anyone have any idea how expensive it is? Do I just scrub the rock in saltwater with a brush?

I have a lot of debris in there too and although I regularly stir it up, I am sure there's loads of 'leftovers' from the carnage I seem to have created. I am highly tempted to move the corals into a QT, and give everything a proper stir up and let the pump and filter and PS do its work!

How often should the filter pads in the pump be cleaned? I red somewhere every six months but that seems a long time!

I just want to SCREAM with frustration because it was all going so well until the air freshened incident!!!

[papagimp]

I pay for my RO from the lFS, here in Oklahoma, US I pay about $2.00 per 5 gallon jug of ro/di water. NOt sure on the conversions for ya, lol.

I"d ignore the algae for now, if it gets worse and worse and worse, then worry about it, but for now, wouldn't bother scrubbin' the rock. That'll get rid of the algae sure, but it won't get rid of what's causing the algae and in all likelyhood, it'll come back.

Filter pads should be cleaned "as needed" but I clean mine roughly ever week, sponges and prefilters, and thefilter sock get cleaned a lot more than that. YOu don't want anything building up on filter pads. Most remove them altogether and even I have one tank where i have no filters like that at all, they can add to nitrates/phosphate problems that fuel algae.Don't wait 6 months to clean em, that's asking for trouble. At a minimum, do it with every water change (weekly)

[auntynatal]

They have to be done in saltwater I presume? Another question - if you don't mind. How do I know if there's enough oxygen in the water? And I have been doing top ups one week and 10% water change the next - is this not enough?

(and the conversion is £1 GBP to $2 USD - roughly)

[marduc]

air freshened incident?

here in the states RO/Di from a LFS usually runs ~$1/gal can't say for your side of the pond though.

That left over debris is great food for those aiptasia's. get a rubber maid tub fill with old water when you do a water change (make it a large water change), agitate the rocks in the tub to remove any detritus on them, use a toothbrush to scrub off the algae perhaps and rebuild.

You may want to consider replacing the substrate as well if there is a lot of debris there, scavengers are good too, a few nassarius snails or a serpent star would be good low impact additions for you

[papagimp]

Originally posted by auntynatal
They have to be done in saltwater I presume? Another question - if you don't mind. How do I know if there's enough oxygen in the water? And I have been doing top ups one week and 10% water change the next - is this not enough?

(and the conversion is £1 GBP to $2 USD - roughly)

If you are refering to the Biological filter pads, i'd remove them altogether and make sure to have enough live rock and sand in the tank. The live rock and sand IS your biological filter in a reef tank. much more effective than a biopad or bioballs or anythign like that. If it's just a filter pad though, just keep em clean and replace often. If you do want the added bio filter going though, rinsing them in old tank water will keep the bacteria on them from being killed off, otherwise use good ol' fashion hot tap water and scrub it clean (keep a close eye for bristleworms first, dont' want to catch one while scrubbin' the pads, it sucks)

Most SW reef tanks don't have a problem with lack of oxygen. But to make sure you have enough, you want plenty of surface agitation going on. if the tanks surface is nice and choppy but not splashing everywhere, you should be just fine. Surface agitation is how water exchanges gas (sounded rude didn't it?) if you run a sump/refugium, which i highly recommend, the water flowing down into the sump will severly help oxygenate the water, and if that ain't enough, a good skimmer (which you should have IMO) will definatly oxygenate the water more than you'll need.

[auntynatal]

So, is RO water already salted? Thats probably such a DUMB question...

[papagimp]

Ro/Di = very filtered water....no salt...no nothing. 99.8% pure water, or somewhere around that number.

[auntynatal]

I have a fluval 205 filter, and I was referring to the filtration pads within that unit. I have live rock, but not live sand. I should strip it down and restart shouldn't I! I'm going to need a second mortgage at this rate lol