nunofs
Non-member
I realized a few days ago that I had an encrusting coral (not sure what kind, dull brown, no visible/extended polyps) on one rock that was taking over that piece of rock, and starting to kill my orange cap by growing onto it. Btw, I only realized it was a coral a while back, when I injected some Joe's Juice into a vermetid snail shell, and the coral died (turned gray) in the surronding area.
I felt I had to get the rock out in order to kill the rest of the coral, so I removed the few (good) corals I had on that piece of rock (had to break off the orange cap, but I needed to frag it anyway to remove the parts that were being covered by the encrusting coral).
Then the question arised... how to effectively kill the coral to make sure it wouldn't reappear later? I tried burning it with a lighter (this way I wouldn't totally kill the rock, just the coral) but it was so spread out that I feared I was going to miss some spots.
So I ended up throwing the rock into a bucket of tap water... first hot, then cold... I was going to leave the rock in the bucket overnight, but thought that what would really, really kill that bad coral would be having the rock spend a nice, "cozy" night outside, in the snow
And so I dumped the rock on the deck and it spent the night there... in the morning I washed it again, added some "Prime" (antichlorinator) to the bucket to remove any traces of chlorine/chloramine from the tap water, and into the tank it went again... since it's only one rock among many, I'm pretty confident that even with the die-off in that rock I won't see any ammonia/nitrite.
Anyone had a similar encrusting coral taking over? And how did you deal with it?
Nuno
I felt I had to get the rock out in order to kill the rest of the coral, so I removed the few (good) corals I had on that piece of rock (had to break off the orange cap, but I needed to frag it anyway to remove the parts that were being covered by the encrusting coral).
Then the question arised... how to effectively kill the coral to make sure it wouldn't reappear later? I tried burning it with a lighter (this way I wouldn't totally kill the rock, just the coral) but it was so spread out that I feared I was going to miss some spots.
So I ended up throwing the rock into a bucket of tap water... first hot, then cold... I was going to leave the rock in the bucket overnight, but thought that what would really, really kill that bad coral would be having the rock spend a nice, "cozy" night outside, in the snow
And so I dumped the rock on the deck and it spent the night there... in the morning I washed it again, added some "Prime" (antichlorinator) to the bucket to remove any traces of chlorine/chloramine from the tap water, and into the tank it went again... since it's only one rock among many, I'm pretty confident that even with the die-off in that rock I won't see any ammonia/nitrite.
Anyone had a similar encrusting coral taking over? And how did you deal with it?
Nuno
