Cleaning Established Live Rock Already in Tank

[stevedurbin]

My tank is 3 years old and my live rocks are just covered with pulsing xenia, aptasia and algae and I just want to take them all out of my tank and clean then to get ride of everything but I don't want to loose the years of good stuff built up on them either. Any suggestions?

 

[brandon429]

Surgery. Take them out and use a knife to scrape off the unwanted working around the items you do, live rock isn’t super hard or tough you can rasp off anything you want and set rocks back clean, rinsed in saltwater.
some tanks can kill fish doing this if the sandbed is filthy, when removing rocks it might upwell dangerous waste

post a full tank pic let’s see details that determine whole tank cleaning needed including sand, or if you can work rocks alone and be safe, pics will tell.

aiptasia surgery

Direct aiptasia removal from surfaces as the top removal option

https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/first-aiptasia-sighting-what-would-you-do.808233/page-2#post-8647852 notice in the thread the surface with aiptasia was removed from the reef, and what was beside the aiptasia frag was taken off and moved back onto the reef allowing the aiptasia + the surface...

www.reef2reef.com

for dirty systems, whole tank surgery

Algae Identification

Any opinions on what type of algae this is growing on my rocks and sand bed?

www.reef2reef.com

both are skip cycle options and won’t cause a mini cycle.

 

[stevedurbin]

There is just so much to remove it would take days to remove it all with scraping

 

[brandon429]

price of delay. nobody has a thread showing in tank cleaning of that, the chems and irritants release alone will be too risky imo

 

[brandon429]

that's a very nice reef even if you left as is

if you buy anything designed to fix aiptasia, based on a post it worked for someone, expect it to not. its why we use phillips screwdrivers there, we're not joking around.

 

[NeonRabbit221B]

+1 for removal but I prefer my trusty (rusty) wood chisel.

At some point you may want to some some more LR or dry rock away from the larger islands and let it seed for a good 6 months. At that point you can remove the old, cut off what you can and anything you cant should be put on an island.

 

[WVNed]

I had a lesson recently. I had a patch of xenia like yours in a predator tank. Our power went out for a week. My tanks got down to 73 degrees and had low flow during that period. My xenia died back 90% and only tiny spots of it were left.
Perhaps if you took one rock at a time and put it in saltwater that was about 70-72 degrees for a few days covered in the dark it would do what you want.
With the xenia gone I would attack the rest with a toothbrush and hot tap water. I turn the rock so it is under a stream of hot water but runs off and only hits a small spot. Then I scrub it with a cheap stiff toothbrush.

 

[WVNed]

Before the power failure

several weeks after. A few spots of xenia have reappeared. This is where the large patch on the right was. Next to the blue ridge coral.

 

[NeonRabbit221B]

I had a lesson recently. I had a patch of xenia like yours in a predator tank. Our power went out for a week. My tanks got down to 73 degrees and had low flow during that period. My xenia died back 90% and only tiny spots of it were left.
Perhaps if you took one rock at a time and put it in saltwater that was about 70-72 degrees for a few days covered in the dark it would do what you want.
With the xenia gone I would attack the rest with a toothbrush and hot tap water. I turn the rock so it is under a stream of hot water but runs off and only hits a small spot. Then I scrub it with a cheap stiff toothbrush.

Just wanted to say that you have the most interesting advice out of everyone on this board. My brain didn't even go to the option of stressing it to remove it. This is a solid plan

 

[WVNed]

I should mention it didn't die during the power outage. It died over the week after the power was back on in spite of my best efforts to save it and the tanks were back to normal.

 

[WVNed]

Give that yellow tang some nori.

 

[Ashish Patel]

I took a giant rock of zenia from my cousin and my tank had so much flow that eventually all of them died. If possible sell of the rock and whatever is left just blast with flow. I feel it would be too painful to manually remove them from liverock. Your bottom rock is well established so wont be an issue with biodiversity and all.

 

[ZoWhat]

a good handheld violent swooshing