Aiptasia Best Homemade Nuke Juice

[schwh01]

Been fighting a full on war for six months including tearing the tank down. Recently recruited two large peppermints (I think!) and been injecting visible ones, once a week with a version of Joes juice. However, I'm getting through a lot of this stuff and would like to keep the pressure up on those B*s%ds without spending money all the time on proprietry formula.

What are your best recomendations for reef safe homemade Aipstasia killing formulas? Need somthing I can suck up and inject. I've heard of vinegar for example. Any specific type or mix anything with it? Also, surely there's a limit to how much of anything you can put into the water coloumn without it having some negative effect? EG If I dumped a half pint of vinegar in my tank surely that would be bad?

One last thing for advice please....
I've heard that to have any real chance of my peperrmints taking part in the war they need to be the right species. What does this mean and how can I make sure I have the "right ones"? I've seen very simliar looking shrimps labled in my lfs as dancing shrimps. They look very similar to what the lfs sold me as peppermints. How can I definatively tell the difference. Hope that makes sense, please help.

 

[bleedingthought]

Mix kalkwasser (or pickling lime, which can be found at your local grocery store for extremely cheap ) and water to make a thick paste. I mix mine to almost tooth paste consistency. As thick as possible but not too thick so you can suck it up with a syringe. Some people using boiling RO water, but I only use cold RO. Turn off your pumps and squirt this mix on top of the aiptasias. I basically bury them in it. After a couple of minutes you can turn your pumps back on. It'll work just like joe's juice but much, much, much cheaper.

But if you have a whole lot of them, it's a pain to go after individual ones, with any solution. I'm not sure how to tell the shrimp apart because as far as I know they look very similar. If the current peppermints you have are eating them, just get more! How big is your tank?

 

[schwh01]

I've heard of Kalkwasser but only through books and forums. I could buy this from my lfs but they'd probably charge a lot becasue it's a "specialist marine product". I've never heard of pickling lime (bare in mind I'm in the UK, maybe it just has another name here?).

If I can get hold of it cheaply I'd have two further questions:
1) I use a hyperdermic needle to inject right into the "eye" before it closes up. Sometimes works, sometimes not. If I were to use anything that glupey I'd say it wouldn't get drawn up the needle?
2) Wont substantial usage of Kalkwasser upset my parameters (I'm new to reefing, 14 months or so, I don't dose or really do much at all but seem to have a nice healthy tank with nitrates at 0 and healthy clams, coral growth etc) I'd hate to upset the lucky balance I seem to have struck.

I have a 45gl corner tank.

 

[bleedingthought]

I don't use a needle. It's too thick for it. I just use a syringe, one of the ones used to feed infants medicine.

But yes, you can't use too much all at once. Matter of fact, it'd be better to do it early, when your lights first come on. Stagger it out so you're only doing a couple a day. I'd say up to 3-4 a day and you should be fine.

The pickling lime is what is used to pickle things. Not sure if it'd be readily available there in the UK but I know that it's also sold online. The brand I use is Mrs Wages Pickling Lime and it's something like 2-3 bucks locally and it'll kill more than a million aiptasias!!!

Here's a link to the product and you might even be able to order it from them (Not sure if they ship internationally or not):
http://mrswages.stores.yahoo.net/mrswagpiclim.html

Hope that helps.