Safe ways to kill softies in the tank

tesfeld

Premium Member
I have some gsp's, xenia, and fuzzy mushrooms that I need to eliminate without taking the rock out of the tank. I'm open for any suggestions other than injecting kalk which I've already heard, but have yet to try. The xenia is my main concern. I swear that stuff can rejuvinate from a single cell in my tank. I'm hoping to tear it off, then spray kalk on what's left on the rock.

Any bets on how many pm's I'll receive asking for the corals instead of nuking them?
 
I had some Anthelia going berserk on me a while back, and I used a combination of injecting the bigger patches with lemon juice, and covering them with clam shells as well.

I'm a big fan of injecting undesireables with lemon juice. It's cheap, readily available, doens't clog up hypodermics like kalk will, and (For me at least!) it's been highly effective at erradicating undesireables and perfectly safe for the desired inhabitants, even ones that are mere centimeters away from whatever's being injected...
 
I would cover the area also. Don't let any light get to them.

I bet 9 requests. What is the over/under for this bet?
-Chuck
 
@Serk wrote:
I'm a big fan of injecting undesireables with lemon juice. It's cheap said:
I need to control my mushroom population. How do you inject lemon juice to mushroom? Am I correct in assuming you make lemon juice from lemon? :oops:

Thanks,
 
@nobody wrote:
How do you inject lemon juice to mushroom? Am I correct in assuming you make lemon juice from lemon? :oops: Thanks said:
I buy the fake plastic lemon, it totally eradicated my apstaia population. 8)
 
I buy a bottle of pure lemon juice at the grocery store, it was at most a buck or two... Note - Not lemonade, but this is just simply pure bottled lemon juice... :) I've been using the same bottle for several years now. A little bit will do ya'...

My sister's a diabetic, so I have a good supply of hypodermic needles. I just pour a little bit of the lemon juice into a shot glass, draw the juice up into the hypodermic, stick the needle into the base of whatever I'm trying to do in, and inject away.

For Aptasia, I've found it best to go ahead and pierce the animal, start slowly depressing the plunger while pulling the needle out, that way you're guaranteed some of the lemon juice gets on the inside. It's very difficult to get a needle of anything into an Aptasia without it coming out the other side, so I just make it go out the otherside and use this to my advantage.

Disclaimer - I've never tried this on mushrooms, but if anything will take 'em out and NOT nuke your tank, this is worth a shot...

Other disclaimer - Lemon juice has a very low (Acidic) PH so if you used a LOT of it it could lower the PH of your tank, but you'd hafta use a WHOLE lot of it to do this to a tank of any substantial size. Also, it has sugars in it, so it could cause a bacterial bloom along the lines of vodka dosing, but once again, for the amounts needed to terminate a few miscreants, as long as you don't try to execute a Tony sized Xenia colony all at once, it should be fine...
 
@tesfeld wrote:
Anybody in north Dallas got some needles I could have? said:
That sounds like a REALLY strange request. IMO, if you have a tank with good water quality, you will never be able to kill your GSP!

Good luck anyway!
 
Tony, if no one else can come thru for ya' (Paging MarineSnow, Paging Dr. MarineSnow), I can spare a few... I'm not in North Dallas though, but I commute from Rowlett to north-west Plano most days, right along 190, so I'm sure we could work something out...

(Maybe I could give ya' a kilo of calcium hydroxide in a zip-lock baggie at the same time, just to REALLY raise some eyebrows... :twisted: )

(Oh yeah, and the ones I've got are still sealed, NOT used, so there's not a biohazard issue involved)
 
I like the no light idea, there's much less chance of affecting the equilibrium in your tank. I've successfully used the Kalk paste injection before. I would try plain vinegar over lemon juice. Lemon juice contains more chemicals and ingredients than just acetic acid (vinegar). Serk, I'm glad you haven't had any problems w/ the lemon juice. Either a strong base or a strong acid will kill them. Once you do kill them I would remove all the remains possible so that it doesn't affect your water quality.
Just my thought.

Sharon
 
<u>Did someone call my name?</u>

I got 'em for you, Tony. You want new or used? (J/K)
When do you want them?

I'll be working on my tank all day tomorrow...made the transfer to the big tank but it needs a little thing called aquascape. So, I'll be there and available.
 
Tony, you can get syringes at any drugstore for about .25 cents each. Ask for a 20cc 16 guage and that should suit the purpose just fine. If they dont have that exact size ask for something close to it.
 
The one time I tried to get 'em at a pharmacy, they looked at me like I had a third head...

Of course, the long hair mighta been part of it, but they wouldn't sell 'em to me... This was a long time ago though...

Upon further reflection, Sharon's comment about using white vinegar instead of lemon juice has merit. And as I keep white vinegar in my reef cabinet anyway for Kalk additions, I think I'll try that next time in lieu of the lemon juice...
 
I am confused, why are you trying to kill all those off instead of just fragging and selling to the LFS or local reefers?
 
@Isis wrote:
I am confused said:
I think a picture probably explains it. he'd spend all weekend trimming and mounting frags.. LOL

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Except for the xenia and maybe the fairly ugly shrooms, fragging off would require removal from the tank, possible breaking of the rock, and leave a stump behind that would be harder to kill than the entire animal. I propogate xenia in my sump that is harvested monthly.

The gsp's are the real problem. On most of my rocks they can't just be peeled off. Worst example is them growing on the stony skeleton of an acan micro and have completely encircled it, killing the perimeter. Not sure how I'm going to go about that one.
 
may be you can separate the rocks? the ones with softies goes on 1 side and the ones with stonies goes on another side? this way you can still keep the softies... and just kill off the ones on the sps rocks? and the softies hopefully won't spread over?

I just I wish my tank was that fruitful!!

oh and we got our needle at CVS. My husband just told them we're using it for our fishtank injecting the corals. They gave it to us w/o asking anything..

And if you don't want to mount them, I'm sure you can post on the for sale that they're unmounted so you don't have to spend time mounting them.

Bring them to the frag swap!

for the GSPs, tried Xacto knife? it's tedious though, but sometimes you can peel them off using Xacto. Or you'd have to cut into the rock w/ the xacto
 
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