• I won't lye, it works (tentatively speaking)

    Usually whenever I hear some new idea, I'm pretty cautious and resist the urge to proceed until I get more information. However, this time I just ran with it. Pretty out of character, right? Part of the reason is because the stuff recommended is no stranger to this professional stripper.

    So here's the premise. Mix up lye (Sodium hydroxide) with water, and attack those pest anemones. Sounds simple, and it's cheap!

    20 years ago when I started stripping, I used to buy Lye at the supermarket and used it to melt the wax on commercial flooring prior to scrubbing it with a buffer. It was very cheap at about $1.37 a jar. Never mix it with hot water, because the fumes will rise quickly into your lungs. Don't splash it, don't drink it, don't get it in your eyes. Rinse it off your flesh, etc. I never had a problem, and it was a very inexpensive product for what I was doing. Years later, I abandoned it; I used commercial floor stripping products on the market because they worked better and were less noxious. What else is lye used for? Many years ago, it was used to make bars of soap. For the most part, it's sold as a drain opener primarily. And it kills aiptasia, majanos, and other stuff (I bet), you'll see.

    Here are a few pictures before I get into the actual description of the process.

    Before:


    After:


    Before:


    In the process:


    Got your interest yet? Here's my 'kit':


    The recipe is pretty simple. Buy some Rooto at your local hardware store. The jar cost me $3.99. Take a third of a cup of the Rooto-branded lye product, and add it to 2-liters of water. I used cold tap water. I mixed up the lye with some water in a smaller container, then poured that solution into a 2-liter bottle, then filled the bottle up the rest of the way, capped it off, and shook it up well. Done.

    Turn off all the pumps in the display tank. The goal it to apply the lye solution on the pest and not on other stuff. It comes out in a cloud, and settles on the spot in question. If it lands on something you care about, a turkey baster's puff can quickly disperse it to avoid harming the coral.

    I used the syringe that came with a bottle of Aiptasia-X because of the nice metal tip that allows me to aim it better. Each time it was empty, I'd walk over to the 2-liter bottle on the table and draw up more solution, then squirt the stuff over the next pest I could find. The aiptasia and the majanos were quick to retract from the stuff, but it was already too late. It definitely affected them, and it wasn't necessary to inject them or coat them. I did bury a few just because it made me feel better. It seems to work on those pests that are on a vertical wall, usually hard to get to. The lye seems to work merely with proximity.

    10 to 15 minutes later, turn the pumps back on. Rinse out the syringe and clean up the work area. Check out your tank and see how the stuff you applied has blown off, scattering into flakes everywhere that can be skimmed out. There's no reason to worry at this point, as it has been fully diluted by the water in the system.

    The next night, I re-treated some that survived although they looked terrible, balled up or half destroyed. I also applied some to the others I'd missed the night before. Like anything, the trick is to keep trying to eradicate these pests until they are all gone, or they'll simply return later. So, don't think of this as a one-time application because it isn't.

    Here are a few things for you to consider:
    • If you care about your countertop and / or furniture, protect it from any drips of the lye solution. Put down a towel first, as a preventative measure.
    • If you have a lot of these in your tank, treat an area, not the entire reef. Why risk overdosing the tank with too much Sodium hydroxide in one session? Be reasonable, and do a little bit daily. Once the bulk of them are gone from multiple treatments over a week's time, then you can focus on any stragglers in one session without risk to your tank. If you have a nano tank, don't treat all of them in one session. Use some common sense.
    • Don't have the bottle too close to your tank, as you don't want to accidentally spill it into the display or the sump. Bring a small amount in a tiny container, like a test kit beaker (pictured above). If it were to topple over, there wasn't enough in there to hurt my tank.
    • Don't inhale the fumes from the lye mixing up; it'll make you cough.
    • It will warm up as it mixes, which is normal.
    • Shake up the bottle each time you commence, so it is fully mixed and not settled out.
    • One jar will last you forever. I used 1/3 of a cup, and made 2-liters of solution! I won't need to use that much even with the infestation I've been tolerating. I doubt I'll use a full cup of solution, actually.
    What are the effects, long-term? I don't think there will be an issue. My goal is to find every last one, nuke them all, and be done with them at last. If I see a single one pop up, I hope to be motivated to quickly zap it before it becomes two.

    From what I've seen so far, I think it is a good solution, if you'll forgive the pun. I'll be sure to update this with more information in the days to come.

    If you would prefer a different option that seems safer, choose your poison:
    Commercial products
    Aiptasia-X
    Joe's Juice
    Stop Aiptasia

    Household products
    Lemon juice
    Vinegar
    Muriatic acid.
    Kalkwasser paste (pickling lime mixed with water)
    Boiling water
    I've used them all with varying results. I'm liking the lye system.
    .
    This article was originally published in blog: I won't lye, it works (tentatively speaking) started by melev
    Comments 25 Comments
    1. smoothie's Avatar
      smoothie -
      I know people that swear by this and have had no ill effects. I used boiling water, but have only had one case of them in my time
    1. SaraB's Avatar
      SaraB -
      See, I didn't lye to you Marc and I'm glad you are seeing results like I did! I was pretty nervous trying it out, but I saw no ill effects to the system overall and the majority of the aptasia I treated are goners.
    1. drimo's Avatar
      drimo -
      I'm definitely going to give this a try with my majano outbreak. I hate those little bastards!
    1. melev's Avatar
      melev -
      Sara, I knew you wouldn't steer me wrong. Do you have anything further to add to the article? I tried to cover all the bases.
    1. seapug's Avatar
      seapug -
      I've tried a lot of DIY and commercial Aptasia products, but nothing seems to work for me as well as Aptasia-X. The syringe and angled metal needle alone are worth the cost (as Melev demonstrates in this article), but the product itself seems to work better than anything else I've tried. A $20 bottle can last a year if you just need it for periodic use. In the case of a major infestation, the Lye may be a more cost effective solution, but you're still going to want that nifty Aptasia-X applicator syringe .
    1. melev's Avatar
      melev -
      I have at least two bottles of Aiptasia-X on hand, but it really didn't seem to phase the majanos at all.

      Btw, just for the heck of it, I tried it on a mushroom that was leaning on some SPS tissue to see what would happen. I also tried it on an area of cyano. This may be the terminator I've been looking for, but I'll have to do a little more testing before I can make that an official stance.
    1. dpmamay's Avatar
      dpmamay -
      I tried Joe's juice with no luck. So I went to my LFS and bought myself a Racoon Butterfly for my reef tank. (I know, but I have a reef and a fowlr, he will move to the fowlr when his quarantine period is over and he's done his job.) He sat in my reef tank for two and a half weeks and I had not seen him eat anything. The Majano's were practically laughing at him. Then one morning I woke up and Majano meadow was devastated!!!! The next day Majano lane was also destroyed. Now today all of my big huge 1 inch majano's are mere specs of what they used to be. Now I just have to get him eating prepared food and move him into my fowlr in another two weeks and all should be well.
    1. melev's Avatar
      melev -
      That's great. Got lots of pictures to document it?
    1. Tumbleweed's Avatar
      Tumbleweed -
      Marc how easy was it for you to find the Lye? I was told that it is difficult to find 100% Lye because the FDA and ATF were getting companies to stop selling it that way because it was being use to make meth.
    1. melev's Avatar
      melev -
      I bought it last year at Ace (True Value) Hardware up in Denton. I saw it as I was driving by, and picked it up so I could recharge some DI resin, and never got around to that project. It was in my garage, still in the brown bag they bagged it in.

      I'm really sick of drug users and dealers screwing up every solution we hobbyists discover. It seems like every solution later becomes impossible because someone decided it was better to cook it and inject it rather that use it to: make soap, open drains, and strip floors!
    1. Charlie's Avatar
      Charlie -
      You could try this:
      http://www.wamas.org/forums/topic/35...mojano-burner/
      Paul, a very expirienced eletrician, modified the design by Trido here on Reef Addicts. While Trido's design is good, several of Paul's improvments make this more attractive. As fun as Lye is to use to distroy Aiptasia, imagine having a "shock-the-pests" party.
    1. turbot04's Avatar
      turbot04 -
      sounds like it is worth a shoot. They just keep coming back form kalk paste. I miss my cooper band,
    1. Tumbleweed's Avatar
      Tumbleweed -
      Marc just curious to see how this is turning out. Have you noticed any of the Aptasia returning or any other negative effects since this was done?
    1. melev's Avatar
      melev -
      I didn't see any negative effects in my tank, but I did discover that a 2-liter bottle will melt from the stuff. It cracked the base and leaked out into my fishroom. I was in a hurry, so I inverted the bottle to save 80% of the solution, and today that bottle was empty and my fishroom floor had a 1.8 liter puddle of lye water. I guess the best bet is to store it in a glass jar or bottle.

      Some of the pests returned that didn't die the first go round, and I'm going to need to treat again. There are less though, which makes me happy.
    1. Jimmy Walls's Avatar
      Jimmy Walls -
      I guess I need to pick up some lye. Anything that can kill majanos and be used to regenerate resin would be good to have, but now people are regenerating GFO with it also. Talk about saving some money.
    1. melev's Avatar
      melev -
      Jimmy, good to hear from you again. I'm about to order the Majano Zapper from PaulB. It's far more satisfying. Need to get an email out to him.
    1. briight's Avatar
      briight -
      We are soap makers, and we have lye on hand all the time. This is where we purchase our lye, and you can buy in the relatively small quantity of 2 lbs.http://www.aaa-chemicals.com/sohytegr2lb.htmlThis company has been very reliable for us. I'm glad to know that if we ever encounter majanos again, I won't have to ditch the whole rock (it was a small rock, but the majanos grew out of nowhere). And it won't be expensive to deal with.
    1. briight's Avatar
      briight -
      Safety precautions when handling lye:Always add lye to water, NEVER add water to lye. Wear some safety glasses or something over your eyes. Not a bad idea to use nitrile or latex gloves either.The reaction between lye and water is exothermic, it will heat up and fume caustic vapors. Leave the kids out of this science project.It doesn't have to be in solution to cause a burn, as it attracts moisture to itself. The tiny beads also hold a static charge with the plastic container the lye granules come in, and they tend to jump around when you pour them from the bottle. Be careful to wipe up any of the area you work in whether or not you think you spilled the lye granules at all.Be very careful about where and how you store the solution so that it doesn't look present a danger to a kid. Mix as little as you possibly can and put the rest down the sink drain for the safest bet if you have little guys. Lye is cheap, kids are priceless.If you get some of the solution on you, rinse it immediately under cool water. I have dealt with spills, and soap boil-ups and thought I didn't get any on me, only to find my skin slippery and sore a few minutes later as the lye dissolved the top layers. Lye works as well on human tissue as it does on majano tissue, so please, be careful using it.
    1. JimM's Avatar
      JimM -
      Tried Marc's recipe for success and so far so good... did use a glass jar though! There were two Aiptaisa and a dang colony of majanos. The lemon juice trick worked about 50% on the aiptaisa and hardly at all on the majanos. I'll keep you posted cause I'm sure there are more majanos hiding in the rock pile just waiting to come out!
    1. matt_longview's Avatar
      matt_longview -
      I'm so glad you commented on this and brought it up on the home page Jim!

      Marc, what results did you end up having on the mushrooms??? :-)

      I already placed the order for this hoping it would take care of some green hairy mushrooms! ;-)