Cant seem to kill aptasia

R

rimrider19k

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Jan 22, 2006
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I have an outbreak of aptasia in my tank. I have tried the boiling water, lemon juice and the pepermint shrimp. Nothing has touched them. I even tried a long nosed butterfly but that just died. The tank is 55 gallons and has only 2 fish now because of this crap. The other problem I have is that the algea on my rocks and glass is growing at an incredible rate. I have a few turbo snails but they arnt cutting it. What do I need to do as far as a lean up crew. I want to get it cleaned up before I get more fish. Thanks,
Michael
 
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What size tank? How long has it been setup? What lighting do you have? What do you use as source water? I've used Joe's Juice and it's killed every one.
 
The tank is a 55 gallon tank, that has been running for about 2 years. I use tap water but i have been looking that isnt a good thing. what do I need to be using? The lighting is a t5.
 
rimrider19k said:
The tank is a 55 gallon tank, that has been running for about 2 years. I use tap water but i have been looking that isnt a good thing. what do I need to be using? The lighting is a t5.
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RO/DI (self-made or from an LFS) would be preferable and probably go a very long way to solving the algae problem. How long are your lights on per day? What type of T5s do you have? How old are the bulbs? Sorry for all the questions... I had a similar problem and by reducing my duration and adding some Algone eliminated most of the algae. Joe's juice took out the aiptasia.
 
I've heard of people using a needle and syringe to inject kalk solution into the aiptasia to kill it. Seems to work well from what I've gathered. As far as water I use RO (reverse osmosis) water because it's much cleaner than tap water and should help with the algae issue. It sounds like you likely have too many phosphates in your tap water and that's why the algae is out of control. You can also try a lawnmower blenny. They often go after all sorts of algae.
 
Ive only had the t5s for about 3 months. I was considering a blenny or something of that nature but didnt want to get a nother fish and have it die. What is done to make ro water?
 
rimrider19k said:
Ive only had the t5s for about 3 months. I was considering a blenny or something of that nature but didnt want to get a nother fish and have it die. What is done to make ro water?
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You need a RO/DI filtration system. The Filter Guys have a good one for $199.00. You can get phosphate sponge (actually crystals) and that will help reduce the phosphates. I don't know about the aptasia. I've heard that some shrimp will eat it.
 
For your aptasia a copperbanded butterfly could be the go it worked well for me. For the algae maybe your nitrates are too high so getting the reduced will be important, also maybe something like a tang will help. They are pretty good algae eaters.
 
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