You know, you think you're raising them right.  You keep them fed, provide a safe, healthy environment for them to live.  You lavish them with care and attention.

All this and still, sometimes, good tanks go bad.

I've experienced some trauma lately with my 54 gallon saltwater live reef acquarium.  Even after a year and a half, I'm still sort of a rookie aquarist and don't know nearly everything I need to know.  If I did, I might have avoided some rookie errors.

Some months ago, I knew my tank was thriving.  Lots of beautiful purple coralline algae coated the live rock.  A good sign, according to my aquarium expert/mentor Vicky.  A short while later, I reported that plant life was sprouting up all over the place!  Another good sign, I was sure.  A month or so after that, I noticed that some of my corals weren't doing so well.  A couple of fish died.  Oh no!

Was my once beautiful tank suddenly ailing?

I scheduled an in-home visit.  The diagnosis?  That wasn't healthy plant life growing on the rock, and some of the corals.  Oh no.  Those were ugly brown nuisance anemones called aiptasia!

There's no playing nice with aiptasia.   For the good of the rest of my tank, I needed to become an (shudder) anemone executioner.  Armed with a special liquid I spent an extraordinary amount of time, patiently "feeding" the anemones.  They shriveled and appeared to die, but a few days later..... They were back in full force.

Apparently, in my blissful ignorance, I left the problem untended for far too long.  (Not that I knew it was a problem, hence the blissful ignorance.)  A couple of weeks ago, Vicky traveled down for a visit.  She took one look at my tank, gasped and said, "Oh my God.  I've never seen an outbreak of aiptasia this bad!"

Uh oh. 

How bad was it at this point?  Did you see the movie 300?  Think of the Persians overrunning the Spartans and you'll have an idea.

Some had even taken root on the clam!

That poor clam was a good example of being too popular.  In addition to aiptasia, Some of the wonderful, healthy star polyps had spread to its shell, and a feather duster tube worm attached to its underside. 

On top of all this, Vicky took a look at my blue tang and asked, with more than a smidgeon of sarcasm, "What the hell are you feeding him?  Steroids?  That tang is freakin' HUGE."

Hey, I just thought he was really, really, healthy.

Clearly, I had an Aquarium 9-1-1.  Vicky instituted emergency rescue procedures.  The entire tank had to be emptied out -- fish, corals, live rock, water, sand.  Vicky and her assistance scrubbed it out clean and rerocked it with new live rock they'd brought from her store.  They painstakingly examined every piece of coral and returned only the pieces they deemed absolutely aiptasia free. 

They packed the infected rock in their travel bins and confiscated my tangzilla fish -- over my sputtering objections.  "Listen.  He's too big for this tank.  You can't keep him," Vicky informed me in no uncertain terms.  She promised to add him to a much larger tank where he could live out the rest of his overgrown life.

My tank is now in the process of re-stabilizing.  I have strict instructions to keep a careful eye out for the first sign of any aiptasia -- and to kill any intruders on sight!   I must strictly follow new feeding instructions, too.

In a couple of weeks, if all goes well, I'll be able to add more fish and corals.  When I do, I'll take some more pictures and give an update.

In the meantime, wish me luck as I recover from this tank trauma!

Oh, Mary, I'm so sorry about your tank!! :-( And losing Tangzilla too. He was so pretty!

I hope your tank gets restablished quickly so your fish have a safe environment to grow in. :)