aiptasia in weird places.

[Riona]

Hm. Posted this on another board last night, but I'll do it here too. I've got 2 tiny anemones in my tank. Both hiked in. One on some zoas from FL, one from my LRS on the brain coral I got from them(low on the skeleton). The first ran away, and ended up hiding IN a sponge, in the shade. Both seem to be ignoring each other. The other has a little hole in the brain's skeleton that it retreats into. I was originally wanting to leave the first, since it doesn't seem to be doing any harm, but the more I think about it, the more I don't think it is a good idea. Pretty sure the first is an aip, the other looks more like the generic "rock anemone" that acts like an aip.

I don't know if I could get close enough to nuke them with kalk/joe's/lemon juice/whatever else without killing at least the sponge, dunno about the brain, since it is low on the skeleton. What should I do?

 

[zoomfish1]

You can make it retreat into the hole and cover it with kalk paste, superglue, mounting putty, you get the picture. Especially for the one on the brain coral, I would probably put super glue over that on.

 

[Rosseau]

do you have room for a peppermint shrimp?

they eat them up and aren't expensive... mine was $6.00
mine gets along well with everything else i keep and manage to eat all 4 of my aip's within a week and i haven't seen any more since

 

[Riona]

Hm. I'd heard that peppermints would go after the zoas and feather dusters that I had in my tank too. I've got room. It's a 20 gal. with 2 clowns and sparse corals, no other shrimp.

What about the one in the sponge? I can't use anything caustic, and it retreats too far for the glue to be a good solution, I couldn't cover it far enough. And the rock has a tunnel through the entire thing. Plus I'm afraid that if I use some caustic stuff like the kalk that it would harm the sponge, right?

 

[zoomfish1]

Yes it might do harm. The reason I suggested the putty was for the sponge as you can't expose the sponge to air.

It does depend on being able to get to the aptasia to be able to kill it. Without seeing the spot, It's just a good guess as to what might work. Surely there is some way to seal it's hole and kill it.

 

[Rosseau]

yeah i've heard mixed things as well about the shrimp.... does your LFS let you rent livestock?! lol...

 

[Riona]

AWFUL picture, but you can see where the anemone is in the sponge. It is towards the right side of the pic, on the sand. The rock is next to the one with the anthelia, and the sponge is the grey-yellow part of it(my camera bites) with the tan splotch. At least you can tell how retreated into the sponge it is that way. . .