Anybody read any of my posts regarding the asterina stars? Damn things eat coraline. I got them on live rock. It's taken hundreds of hours of manual removal to put a dent in the population. I stand in front of my tank and stalk these stupid things for hours at a time. Yes, I said I spend HOURS standing in front of my tank with a turkey baster in my hand. Standing there looking for pest star fish and sucking them out one at a time. I've probably sucked out 5000 of them from 1/8" across to 1" across. Probably blown 300 gallons of water down the drain - one turkey baster at a time..............
Yay for me - I got biodiversity!!! :grumble: Oh, and I got almost no coraline on my rocks. Ain't that nice? :pooh:
I have not added any rock to my system in over 18 months. Never saw a single one of these stars until about 6 months ago. They just popped up outta nowhere. Just goes to show you how long a pest can hibernate or live "under the radar" in your tank before they grow to plague proportions.
I also picked up an aiptasia on a piece of live rock. Again, this was a piece of rock that had been in my system for over 18 months. Never seen one before until that day, over 18 months AFTER I put it in my tank. I yanked that rock out of the tank as fast as I could, sliced the anenome foot off the rock with an exacto knife and then got my cordless drill and a masonry drill bit. Drilled a 3/8" diameter hole right down into that rock about an inch deep. Drilled right where the anenomes foot was attached. Cut, scrapped and hacked all around the top of the hole with an exacto knife until I had created a nice marble sized crater. Filled that entire hole with super glue until it was full to the top and let it cure. It took about 1/2oz of glue to fill the hole and crater.
Never seen another aiptasia in my tanks. :Cheers:
Can you imagine how easily that little SOB could have ruined my tank? If I hadn't spotted it and cut it out, it could have turned into 10,000 little aiptasia' and I'd be boiling rock like Biff did to get rid of majanoes.
Biodiversity is great. Coraline on fresh rock is great. Getting what you paid for it also great.
Reef pests ain't so great. :pooh:
Take the plain white rocks and consider yourself BLESSED!! :Cheers: