aiptasia eating filefish

[Das awesome]

I just got one of these a few weeks ago to take care of my aiptasia problem and it has not touched any of them!! Actually, I take that back. It nipped at one, but I think it's because it caught a piece of mysis so it was going after the mysis. It is the only fish in the tank right now, a 14g biocube, and I didn't feed it for a few days so that it would eat all the aiptasia, but since it hasn't touched any of them, I'm now feeding it so that it doesn't die. How come it wont eat the aiptasia? Has anyone else had this problem?

 

[ptr13]

yes I did, had the filefish for aiptasia but like my zoos a little better and started to consume my softies so he had to go, every fish vary in personality.

 

[capt85]

Mine ate aiptasia and duncans....

 

[Good gREEF]

I would get a half dozen peppermint shrimp they seem to have done the trick
On our nasty little brown buds my prob is my mystery wrasse loves to munch on them
So i have to replenish the population every so often but if you can keep a few in your
Tank at all times they will help trim them apstasia back i also
Have had luck with copper band butterflies in the past but not all take to eating the apstasia
you might have to try a few till you get one that has a taste for them throw them both in there couldn't hurt

 

[Das awesome]

I've tried pretty much everything I can think if except the nudibranchs. The lfs's around have a hard time finding them. I can't do butterflies cuz it's only a 14g and I hear the really small butterflies are extremely sensitive to water changes. I have tried like 10 different peppermints and not one of them has eaten the aiptasia. Aiptasia X seems to just spread it even worse than before. Is there any way that this one might eventually just try the aiptasia and start eating it? I'm really tempted to just try this tiny copperband (like 1"-1 1/2") but I don't know if it's eating at all.

 

[Das awesome]

I would get a half dozen peppermint shrimp they seem to have done the trick
On our nasty little brown buds my prob is my mystery wrasse loves to munch on them
So i have to replenish the population every so often but if you can keep a few in your
Tank at all times they will help trim them apstasia back i also
Have had luck with copper band butterflies in the past but not all take to eating the apstasia
you might have to try a few till you get one that has a taste for them throw them both in there couldn't hurt

I used to have a mystery wrasse in there and one day it just disappeared, but while it was in there, each peppermint would disappear like a week later. I didn't know mystery wrasses even ate shrimp.

 

[Yurivd]

If you had a larger tank angels are grate for eating aiptasia

 

[SecretiveFish]

We bought a 150 used that was being taken over by aiptasia, majano, bubble algea, and decaying matter that had lead to an explosion of bristle worms. We cleared it up finally (took 2-3 months!) by a combination of a matted filefish who ate the very small aiptasia and manually killing the small-absolutely huge aiptasia/majano with Aiptasia-X.

We were in there weekly killing aiptasia until all the ones with any size were gone. The filefish has kept the display tank aiptasia free now (since we killed the ones that were too big for him to eat), but we still do have aiptasia in the overflow boxes and the sump. We just manually kill those as we can.

In summary, maybe the aiptasia are too big for him to eat.

 

[Boat_Drinks]

I had my female matted filefish (Acreichthys tomentosus) in QT for 4 weeks where she was fed mysis, and some other frozen foods.

For the first few weeks after being placed into the DT, I didn't notice even a small dent in the aiptaisia population (I would say there were at least 50-75 anemones to start). I assumed that I had just gotten her used to eating frozen foods in QT, and I would have to try another method of aiptaisa removal.

Another 3-4 weeks went by, and I started to notice that the smaller aiptaisa anemones were dissappearing, followed by the medium, and eventually the largest had completely vanished. I never saw her eat a single one, but the only change that I had made to the system (and to my maintenance routine)during that time was adding the filefish.

After 6 months, my DT is now (at least visually) aiptasia free.

I was concerned that after the aiptaisa were gone, she might start ridding my tank of corals, but this turned out not to be the case. (I have a 120 gallon mixed reef with a few zoos and softies, but mostly LPS, SPS, and several Tridacnid clams).

Of course all fish are individuals, and I may have just lucked out with mine, but I wanted to share the success I have had with this fish. Hopefully you will start to notice a difference in your aiptasia population within the next frew weeks.

-Ben