Blog Comments

My plans called for considerably higher flow than he recommends.

Big mistake. Slow it down.
(sorry I just joined here and I saw this.)

Indeed, that is a far superior method. I sliced off a large 4 incher and buzzed the remaining goo. The red portion of the shrooms is much tougher than the base portion. Thanks for pointing out the obvious thing I looked past. Much less slime and easily killed in one shot instead of 5.

You might consider cutting off the bulk of the mushroom, and then hitting the tissue left behind.

Here's a video of the first treatment on a fair sized stray. The shroom is just over 2 inches across. These have been overtaking some zoos. You can see the mess it makes but most of it floats to the top where I skim it off with a net. The rest seems to get cleaned up by the night crew. By tomorrow there will be a very unhappy bit of shroom left. My guess is this one will take 3 shots to clear completely. I'm told that a 24V power supply will make much shorter work of it.

The tips are maybe 3 inches apart. It doesn't matter a whole lot. Within a couple inches is good.
The power supply I bought happened to be "universal". I could reduce the voltage but I went right for the gold and haven't tried lower voltages.
I kind of stir the shroom with the needle and they are slowly reduced to white and red slime that I skim off the top. They're pretty tough little buggers. A 1 inch mushroom may take two doses over two days. I take it pretty slow though. A big mushroom makes a lot of slime! I believe it's the chemical reaction at the needle that does the deed. The bubbles it produces don't seem to harm other things. Only what the needle touches is "burned".

what's the distance between the anode and electrode?
Are you stepping up the voltage or is it just 12 volts?
How are you using the device? Are you sticking the needle into the pest and allowing the current to flow through the water as a medium between the graphite and needle?

Please do explain......
Thanks

We want some before, during, and after pictures!

So I'm not crazy!! Awesome, thank you. I'll have to wander over and see.


Uh oh, now look what you've done. I'll be up all night reading his stuff. I've already started to reinvent. My plans called for considerably higher flow than he recommends. I may have to make some changes in my design. lol

Hop over to that other giant reefing web site, and look up PaulB, he's been running a reverse undergravel set up like that for 40 years now.

My concern with a Harlequin is my red Brittle Star. Not sure if the shrimp would try to have a him for lunch. I've read they don't usually because brittle stars can run away but I would hate to see mine get munched on. Not sure how my Coral Banded would appreciate another shrimp in the house. Otherwise I'd have no issue feeding the shrimp later. Vacuuming the stars up with a canister filter and keeping the gunk build up clean out seems to be keeping them at least tolerable for now. As Hat said, kids do love searching for them. It's when they're every where that the "Find the Star" game gets too easy lol. The one remaining issue with these guys is, I've read of them being suspect in die of Zoos. Over the last year most of my zoos have shriveled away. I have always blamed my lacking maintenance and the over bearing of the red mushrooms. I kind of wonder now...

My best trick for the snails is tweezers. Go in there and crush em one by one. It takes a lot of time when they start getting out of hand and you have to make sure you squish the snail or it'll just start building a new "chimney". My biggest mistake was letting them live to begin with. "Hey look, it's something alive, yay". Same thing happened with the stars. Thought I had some neat free critters on some rocks. I should have squished the first one I saw. lol Oh well hindsight is no use worrying over right. Got myself a fresh bag of Kent salt, tweezers and a filter hose. I'm off to work!

I have the snails in my tank. So, if you knock them off they die? I also have some of those starfish, but not many. They came on some recent purchased liverock. My grandbabies like to look for them in the tank. Nice read! ;-)

I hate those snails and take a flat head screw driver to them in my tank to break them off the rock if possible. The little stars are solved a bit easier. Get a Harlequin shrimp. It'll clear a tank of those little babies in no time flat. Once they're gone though. You'll have to feed it or sell it.

Well there's a couple pics. As you can see the sand needs some work as do the walls. General maintenance is what this tank needs most. I've kept up on water and the parameters are all pretty darn good. It's everything else I need to get back up on.

Welcome---I also have a 75 tanks with about 90 gallons in the set up. All so looking at the LED light idea working on small "test" light for refugium just to get a handle on how it works. Sound like you have a good plan...should post some pictures...look forword to future post on your progress