Dip to kill Xenia and softies only?
 

I have large rocks that are heavily encrusted with sps, softies, sponges and worms.

I'd like to remove the softies (Xenia, GSP, buttons, mushrooms) but not harm anything else. I'm partial to the sps and sponges I've cultivated.

Would a freshwater dip make them pop? Bayer? Heavy iodine? High concentration Aptasia X?

I would take hours to remove with kalk and superglue. I'm looking for a possible lazy way out.

Would like to know too.. my gsp is spreading over the rock. Ugly brown gsp..

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Why don't you trade your rock in for some bare stuff? Or sell it to someone who likes those softies?

Seems like a waste to just kill the animals you've let grow in your tank because you want to switch to SPS and sponges.

I already have SPS and sponges. The Xenia was a small ride along that became invasive.

I made this rock myself out of PVC and concrete. Over time, the softies will kill the sps on it, even in someone else's tank.

That's the real shame

I am not aware of a selective coral killer that targets softies but leaves the rest alone...

scissors does it pretty well

I'm not so sure about that.....not with my waving hand Xenia.

To make room for my first rainbow BTA, I cut a bunch of those big Xenia trunks all the way down to the rock surface. 2-3 weeks later the remaining very thin mucus remnant grew back into bushes of baby Xenia colonies.

Any tissue regenerates.

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Maybe I'll dip it in acid just below where the satosa starts

The concrete is too hard to break. I've fragged the sps plenty of times and this is the parent.

Acid dipping would melt the sponges inside and below too.

I don't know of anything that'd be selective for soft corals. I think you'll have to work by hand, which is going to be time-consuming and long term.

Hydrogen Peroxide directly to the mushroom will kill it immediately.

Make a paste out of kalkwasser and water. Use a syringe to apply it to the base
(after you manually remove). Other things i have done are use hammer coral and place them on top of the undesired. Hammer and Frogspawn are pretty aggressive and never loose.

Unfortunately, my frogspawn lost to my Xenia... the mass of Xenia eventually overwhelmed them. :(

I fragged and some heads made it, but it was rough.

The razor + kalk paste and superglue are the "manual" solution I'm trying to avoid. I have 8 feet x 3 feet of rock...

For the reasons that you are experiencing, is why I am not planning to allow ANY soft corals in my new tank that is being built. Debating if I want to chance zoos on their own rock islands on the bottom.

Xenia are dependent on iodine. If your water column is lacking iodine, then xenia tend to disappear over time. The same for ULNS, running ULNS will cause softies to slowly disappear. Difficult to do if you have LPS though as you have to spot feed each LPS using this strategy.

Also I believe you are running skimmerless, which is also like steroids for softies. The higher DOC in the water will cause the softies to multiply at an alarming rate. Ask me how I know this :rollface:

https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/ot...w4400-h2476-no

Dennis

Although a lot of people have said that iodine is required for Xenia to grow, I had a tank with a lot of Xenia, and never had any issues, even without dosing iodine and through periods of inadequate water changes. I don't know of any quantitative data that shows that Xenia require iodine supplementation.

I don't dose iodine. My Xenia don't care. The same thing that helps them helps my sps = feeding and no mechanical filtration. They LOVE my clam smooties - but so do my sps...

My Xenia colonies are the same way......they make a medium sized hammer colony look like a sissy.

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As I sell my sps, the Xenia and GSP exploit the space quickly.

GSP and zoas are just as bad.

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Hit those with hydrogen peroxide. Both Xenia and gsp are very sensitive to it.

Maybe with a direct hit with concentrated H2O2.

When I dosed my tank with a lot of H2O2 (for algae issues), only the Kenya tree suffered.

I dipped some rock in hydrogen peroxide that had bad bubble algae on it. I also had some gsp and Xenia that at the time I was trying to not kill so I did not let it sit more than a minute or so. Some of the Xenia died and the ones that didn't, shrunk really bad. The gsp closed up for about a week and some never did open up. Zoas will blister up really bad. I had some sit in hp for 5 minutes and they survived but looked like crap after the 5 minute dip. I would imagine if you made the dip highly concentrated and let it sit for a long time it might do the trick?


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the whole point is to do this easily. SPS can survive dry for quite a bit.

I guess I could put peroxide in a spray bottle and spray the softies with it a few times.

I think the sponges will likely die due to exposure to air, but I'm willing to accept that as a partial outcome.

Yeah if you do I would do a small area first see how everything reacts.....


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