new to marine tank my first tank!

gmoney243

New Member
Hey all I finally started my 10 gal nano I'm an experienced freshwater guy testing out saltwater been dying to grt into it. Loving this caribean live rock has so many live critter lile muscles etc.. anyone help identify these please id love to know what they are .. also I have some white worms one has some red on it hopefully these arnt dangerous to my kupang damsel.


 

btldreef

Moderator
Welcome!
Not sure about the first pictures, looks to be a single paly polyp. The second picture is most definitely aiptasia and needs to be killed. There are some products on the market such as Joe's Juice and Aiptasia X that will kill them. I prefer Aiptasia X. Not sure what you're trying to show in the third. I see an aiptasia down on the left hand side of the pic, and then what looks to be a cluster or closed polyps or dead sun coral. I'm on my phone, so pictures are showing very small. Hopefully someone else will chime in as well.
http://www.lionfishlair.com/hitchhiker/hitchhiker.shtml <--- a great guide to hitchhikers that you're likely to come across in your tank at some point.
 

gemmy

Active Member
Welcome to the site! I would also read the stickies at the top of the new hobbyist section. There is a ton of great info there that is well worth reading and referencing back to. There is definitely some aiptasia lurking in your tank and you need to rid yourself from it. Do not try to pluck them out, since they have a defense mechanism that causes to release spores when they feel threatened. Can you post some tank stats such as equipment, tank birth date, live stock and water parameters?
 

gmoney243

New Member
Hey thanks guyz .. the aiptasia was only on 2 small rocks that I can see so I put them in a bucket carefully and did a hyposalinity of 1.011 and scrubbed them from the rockslet the rocks sit for couple hours heard this should kill and hopefullynot comeback but if they do guess ill do a needle treatment. Tank is 10 gal with 7 lbs of live rock from lfs cured in their tanks basic hob filter for mech filtering and 2" sandbed mix livesand with crush coral. Ph is 8.2-8.4 no ammonia nitrites and barely readable nitrates like 10 ppm tank been up for couple months using live sand from another established tank .. just got the rock and 1 kupang damsel when I posted .. havnt tested other perams yet as I read those r mainly for when uve got some coral action going.
 

btldreef

Moderator
Your method of ridding your rock of the aiptasia really isn't a wise choice. Putting live rock in hyposalinity or letting it sit out in the air for hours well make it dead rock that needs to be recured. Be very careful with this in your size tank as it could quickly spike ammonia.
 

teresaq

Active Member
first pic looks like a rock anemone. can you get a closer pic.
third pic looks like either closed zoa or palys.
What lights do you have
 

gmoney243

New Member
Light r basic incandescent that came with hood but will get some cfl soon


Close as I can get on this phone
 

gmoney243

New Member
And the rock with the aiptasia are only like 2-3 inch so they don't reaaly contain many if any amphipods or copepods and tje beneficial bacteria for bio filtering wouldn't b effected. Which is why I went that route to kill em. But yea if they show up on bigger pieces I would and will use syringe with lemon juice.
 

kuja

Member
Here is the number one problem with aiptasia is that even if you kill the big ones you will still have small babies. They release their eggs into the water and they grow faster than algae. I would suggest removing anything valuable (like fish, crabs...ect) Turn off your skimmer and remove all carbon from your tank. Than you want to make it snow in your tank. Spike up your calcium, kh, ph and saltwater to stupid levels. I had my saltwater at .40, calcium over 600 for 2 weeks (I don't remember the other levels). When you have high levels of calcium it will look like snow in your tank. Than I did several water changes and turned my skimmer on and put my carbon back in. I waited 2 weeks and did another water change. I waited a month for my tank to go through another cycle. These things are mean and nasty and hard to kill. This method does have a potential to kill your good bacteria. Luckily for me it didn't. I had to go to these extremes since I was not about to buy new rocks for a 150 gallon tank. The only other option is throwout everything, clean every part of your tank with vinegar, and get new sand and rocks.
 

gmoney243

New Member
Update : its been about 2 weeks I had some nitrate problems for a sec they got to 40 ppm but I added an internal fuge/algae tumbler and within 24 hours they went to 0 and stay there. Gotta love chaeto!
Also I added a cheap diy airstone skimmer for added protection although atm its not really needed. Also added some corals. atm I'm building and painting a pvc overflow so I can clean stuff from my display.


 

darthtang aw

Active Member
Sorry...got lost and came to the wrong forum. Nice start to your tank.
Doesn't anyone use peppermint shrimp to contain aptasia anymore?
Darth (lost) Tang
 

swisswiss

Member
best tip (got from here BTW) to kill aiptasia is to inject it with concentrated lemon juice. its cheap and more importantly its natural if your able to find a conserving free product. it will literally make them disappear within a couple of hours (least my small ones did)
 
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