reacaping or tank transfer: pest cleaning??

[JoJosReef]

Not happening immediately, but I am planning to win the Cade tank giveaway. Should luck be less ladylike, there'll be a tank upgrade at some point anyway, but a likely rescape in the mid-term.

I will then be moving my gulf live rock out temporarily for a pest cleaning exercise. I'm tired of the Eunice worms and stubborn baby gorilla that I'm assuming are eating my ceriths.

My questions:

How would you remove the pests while preserving as much of the beneficial/neutral biodiversity as possible?
A. Hypersalinity dip?
B. Squirt soda water in holes?
C. Hyposalinity/RODI dip?
D. Other?

I'd like to avoid breaking the rocks, killing the bacteria and (hopefully) avoid killing the good worms/tunicates/sponges/nems(curliques). Do the methods above kill everything?

Thanks for your advice!

 

[Tuan’s Reef]

Not happening immediately, but I am planning to win the Cade tank giveaway. Should luck be less ladylike, there'll be a tank upgrade at some point anyway, but a likely rescape in the mid-term.

I will then be moving my gulf live rock out temporarily for a pest cleaning exercise. I'm tired of the Eunice worms and stubborn baby gorilla that I'm assuming are eating my ceriths.

My questions:

How would you remove the pests while preserving as much of the beneficial/neutral biodiversity as possible?
A. Hypersalinity dip?
B. Squirt soda water in holes?
C. Hyposalinity/RODI dip?
D. Other?

I'd like to avoid breaking the rocks, killing the bacteria and (hopefully) avoid killing the good worms/tunicates/sponges/nems(curliques). Do the methods above kill everything?

Thanks for your advice!

according to the instructions, make a batch of saltwater from 1.035 to 1.040 SG and dunk it for 5-10 minutes. swish around and the critters should jump off.

 

[Timfish]

First question that comes to mind are you sure your cerith cnails are getting enough to eat? How many do you have? How long have you had them? (Not sure how long they're suppose to live but from what I've seen in my tanks I'd guess about 1-2 years.) Have you tried a trap? Are you seeing any reproduction? (Maybe the eggs are getting eaten and you're not seeing any babies to replace adults as they die off?)

 

[JoJosReef]

First question that comes to mind are you sure your cerith cnails are getting enough to eat? How many do you have? How long have you had them? (Not sure how long they're suppose to live but from what I've seen in my tanks I'd guess about 1-2 years.) Have you tried a trap? Are you seeing any reproduction? (Maybe the eggs are getting eaten and you're not seeing any babies to replace adults as they die off?)

Good questions. I've got plenty of substrate GHA and glass film algae (also on glass bordering substrate). Tank has been running since Oct 2011 with a few shipments of snails. No snail reproduction so far in this tank. I have seen a Eunice try to drag away a dead cerith before, but I didn't witness the murder. I've tried a bristleworm trap for the Eunice, but nada--they don't go far out of their holes. Likewise, haven't been successful yet with gorilla crab traps.

So I'm thinking the solution is to take the rocks out, ditch the old dry rock and use current/new gulf live rocks with a treatment to remove the Eunice worms/gorilla. But, I don't want to kill the live rock, as that isn't ideal either!

 

[Timfish]

For the sand you might try siphoning off the top layer, soak in H2O2 for a day or so, rinse well and return to your system. FOr algae on the glass algae magnets just knock it off and it settles quickly back on hte glass. Using paper towels you can remove the algae. I don't worry about worms on new live rock but I do quarantine it for at least a month in a tank by iteself to let it recover from shipping and to see if there's anything I don't want. To remove big bristle worms from rocks in exsiting tanks I'll use H2O2 to drive them out but you do have to be careful not to kill much else. Have you tried leaving the trap long term baiting it every several days to see if the worms get used to it?


Steel Straws

Paper towels for algae