Hello all,
I have the worst aptasia outbreak ever, and am now battling it with Lye! Not to high jack your post, :wink: however, my Aptasia war began today against this formidable foe and I thought this might tie in to your post. I am using a recipe found on this board, the lye water mix. The recipe is from the sticky note on Aptasias in the new reefers forum. I finally found lye, Red Devil brand at Ace Hardware in the pluming department, and while I was seaching for the lye I found out meth labs use it to produce meth so it is becoming harder to find, at least in my area. The mix I used was 1 part lye to 9 parts water. I used the plastic syringe that came with the Joe's juice, that didn't work, to dose the aptasias. The rock was dosed an hour ago, so I a not sure if the aptasia are gone for good , however the coroline is burned off and bare rock is showing, so I will take that as a good sign. I know this is extreme but I really had no choice, I was to the point of breaking my tank down again.
The water lye mix turns cloudy and thickens when you dose it, so it does not take much, and it creates a thick milky film that covers the area you dose. It is very cool to see the chemical reaction. I did a water change earlier today before I dosed any live rock with the lye, so I had 20 gallons of water in a 32 gallon plastic trash can ready to use as the dosing contaner. I pulled 3 medium sized pieces of live rock from my tank, which are all covered beyond belief with aptasias. Then I set a light over the contaner to better see, and started squirting the little Bas#@$s. I really hope this works, I am so tired of having a tank full of aptasias.
Finally a couple bits of neccesary info my tank is a 65 gallon glass with several fish and one coral, all that was left from me breaking down my 150 gln. My tank is pretty empty at the moment so it made it much eaiser for me to pull out live rock now section by section, verses when it will be loaded with corals later, and be a much bigger pain in the arse.
So far this looks like it might work quite well, with a little time and patience, hope this helps.
Good reefing all!
