Aiptasia - Attack? Or Wait?

[TheRealRuk]

I made it about 15 months with out any aiptasia in my 150g. I see 2 medium size heads in a very hard, if not impossible place to reach. To even have a shot, I would have to lift up the large rock twist it and have my wife try and inject them and then Kalk paste them? I have two BTA on the rock so I can't really take it out with out chasing them off first.

If I got the BTA's off, I could also pull it out and torch it real quick (Still a large monti and some zoo's on the rock...)

Am I crazy for pulling my whole tank apart to try and squash them out, am I trying to fight the inevitable??

Let it go and borrow a filefish or CBB when it gets bad enough?

Recent work personality profile says I'm a perfectionist. Gary said we only have about 5 years in the hobby before we jump off bridges... I was hoping to be aiptasia free for my 5 year run!

Any thoughts would be appreciated!

Matt

 

[redneckgearhead]

I would "nip it in the bud". Are they small enough for a peppermint shrimp to eat?

 

[Dan49]

I had a few small ones in my tank, in hard to get places, and almost overnight a small peppermint shrimp got them . I have been told to stay away from large ones in that they lose interest.

 

[truebeliever71]

I definitely would not wait on it. Get a peppermint shrimp or 2 and get it taken care of. Once the aptasia are gone the peppermints will eat anything you feed the tank.

 

[TheRealRuk]

I forgot about peppermint shrimp... If ARC has any I'll pick up 2 today.

 

[TheRealRuk]

maybe just one...

 

[Gary Majchrzak]

I would try to stay Aiptasia free starting ASAP

 

[TheRealRuk]

Wave One: Recruited x2 medium peppermint shrimp...

Report: New recruit was a little green and was eaten by a maxi mini carpet nem with in 2 hours of deployment. Still looking for his buddy. (I'll post a pic later.)

Aiptasia 1 - Free World 0

 

[pascal32]

Watch the peppermints. Out of 3 I had one slice and dice my nem. Lifetime imprisonment in the sump

 

[mr86mister]

What type of anemone Pascal?

 

[pascal32]

RBTA. Healed up, but took a beating

 

[TheRealRuk]

Picture didn't turn out very well, although you get the idea. (His buddy is still MIA.)

If I flip the rock over and pull it up above the water line, my wife can smear it with Kalk paste. I think once I flip the rock the aiptasia might pull in, and injecting it with something might be more of a pain then it already is.

Anyone have any luck killing with Kalk paste on first application?

Matt

 

[Spartan]

I found the kalk pasting to be a disaster. My current setup is in its 8th or 9th year. For the last few years had maybe 7 or 8 that were just unreachable. But the numbers really never took off. Until one day about a year ago I was doing a major cleaning and decided to go past them all. By that time there were about 15. Initially they shrunk down but then grew back. Second treatment a couple weeks later and them they spread like wildfire. Now about 100, all clustered around the original sites. Just got a filefish last week, so far it's done nothing. I am convinced the kalk "treatment" caused the aptasia to divide.

 

[chuckawd]

I always use Joe's Juice for aiptasia eradication purposes. Works every time and for extremely difficult places to reach, I usually make some sort of specialized injector tip for them. Last battle was with a piece of airline tubing, 2 shish kabob sticks, and a bigger syringe. I had to sneak around some rocks and get all the way down in the back of my tank but building the exact angles I needed into the airline tubing/shish kabob worked perfectly.

Good Luck with your battle.

 

[block head]

dirty buggers... i've tried kalk,shrimp,injection, all with very limited sucess. lately it's been the "i crush your head" method

<iframe width="425" height="349" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/GkQ8cpPsoWU" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

 

[TheRealRuk]

the "i crush your head" method

The first thing I tried was denial... then the shrimp, which don't eat much aiptasia when their DEAD... I've tried a couple injectors in a previous tank (never Joe's). With this one, I couldn't actually see the mouths from where they were, just the a limited side shot. We were ready to inject (all I had was Aiptasia-X on hand), or Kalk paste when I lifted the rock up. (couldn't pull the rock out all the way, because of other coral) They retracted a bit, so we went heavy on the paste. We'll reapply in a few days... If they pop through, I think I may torch them.

 

[MAVX]

I found the kalk pasting to be a disaster. My current setup is in its 8th or 9th year. For the last few years had maybe 7 or 8 that were just unreachable. But the numbers really never took off. Until one day about a year ago I was doing a major cleaning and decided to go past them all. By that time there were about 15. Initially they shrunk down but then grew back. Second treatment a couple weeks later and them they spread like wildfire. Now about 100, all clustered around the original sites. Just got a filefish last week, so far it's done nothing. I am convinced the kalk "treatment" caused the aptasia to divide.

Weird, the night I got my filefish he cleared out all of the larger aiptasia. There are still some very small ones stuck in the rock that he can't reach.