Aiptasia out of control, thinking about going FOWLR

lespaul339

lespaul339

Reefer
I have a way out of control aiptasia problem.I'm talking 100's of them. Have a matted filefish, copperband butterfly, have tried Berghia Nudibranchs and peppermint shrimps. Nothing works. Unfortunately, my copperband won't touch them anymore. My filefish has never touched them.Nudibranchs got put in and then I never saw them again. Peppermint shrimp just die. So I'm seriously considering getting rid of my coral and going FOWLR and picking up a Raccoon Butterfly to get rid of the aiptasia. I'm tired of seeing them overrun my tank. I need a fish that will for sure wipe them out. I can't enjoy my corals with 100's of aiptasia everywhere.
 
Might be time for chemical warfare.

concentrated ALK paste injected into them. (caution, this can drastically raise pH)
Boiling water method.
lemon juice.

I recently started using aptasia-X. I've had to use it each week, but the numbers seem to be going down.

One thing about peppermint shrimp and the matted filefish that I've learned is both seem to only go after smaller aptasia. If you have a bunch of big ones, they may not touch them.

Using chemicals to knock down a bunch of them may allow the more natural predators to do their job and remove them the rest of the way.
 
I've tried kalk paste and lemon juice. Doesn't work IMO. They just pop right back up. Haven't tried boiling water.
 
lespaul339 said:
I can post a pic, but it will have to be after the weekend. Trust me, 100's everywhere. Overtaking all my live rock.
Click to expand...
I'm waiting to see your pic but I would try to salvage what I could and just start all over. You still have beneficial bacteria I would just toss out the rock and get new rock. You have to be careful not to transfer any of the pests to the new setup. This is just my take on this. There's more than one way to approach this.
 
Was the peppermint shrimp in the tank when the Berghia Nudibranchs were? I learned the hard way and found out that peppermints and wrasses are the prime suspects of feeding on the nudibranchs.
 
Out of curiosity.. What are your nitrate levels? (and throw in phosphate for giggles)

I (and others) have found that aiptasia are usually there because of an excess of nutrients thus providing them with sufficient food..

A pic would help too to #1 ensure its really aiptasia and to judge the scale of the issue..

Frankly I find it funny that you have already tried many critters that can/will eat them but all have failed but you somehow have faith that one more will magically just work...
 
mcgyvr said:
Out of curiosity.. What are your nitrate levels? (and throw in phosphate for giggles)

I (and others) have found that aiptasia are usually there because of an excess of nutrients thus providing them with sufficient food..

A pic would help too to #1 ensure its really aiptasia and to judge the scale of the issue..

Frankly I find it funny that you have already tried many critters that can/will eat them but all have failed but you somehow have faith that one more will magically just work...
Click to expand...


I find when my nirate and phos was low i didnt had any but from laziness careless and over feeding they both went up and started an outbreak of aiptasia.
What i also noticed there was a lot where i would only feed my fish.

i used lemon juice + vinegar and have a file fish to help.
 
I view aptasia no different that nuisance algae. Give you corals the best chance at out-completing the nuisance life while manually zapping aptasia regularly. It will require a lot of effort initially, and you may never rid all of it, but at some point, you'll get ahead of it to the point that you'll need only zap one or two during your regular maintenance.

I've used kalk paste lemon juice and aptasia-x. I prefer aptasia-x as it's cleaner and will entomb whatever it didn't chemically kill, so that any remaining cells won't resprout like a weed.

There is a saying among us reef hobbyists, "nothing good happens fast."
 
vashawn said:
I find when my nirate and phos was low i didnt had any but from laziness careless and over feeding they both went up and started an outbreak of aiptasia.
Click to expand...

yep.. Thats what I'm saying..

Lots of aiptasia many times= poorer water quality..

same with an excess of bristleworms, etc...
overfeeding,etc...
 
You need to get Peppermints you know are eating the aiptasia. I had a 120g with a lot of aiptasia, put in about 8 Peppermints and within a month eliminated all visible aiptasia. Some of the Peppermints died but the ones that survived got the job done. I then removed the Peppermints because I caught them munching on coral. That was fairly easy with the bottle trick.

However, the aiptasia never completely disappeared. It was visibly eliminated but slowly popped up here and there. I would kill what I could see with Aiptasia X.

I had the same issue with bubble algae. An Emerald crab kept it in check, but it never fully disappeared. Not until I broke everything down and started over did I eliminate it all. I brought one rock over from my old tank to new because it had such an abundant growth of zoas and mushrooms. I looked it over very carefully to see if there were any pests, but was still taking a risk. So far, a year later, all good.
 
mcgyvr said:
Out of curiosity.. What are your nitrate levels? (and throw in phosphate for giggles)

I (and others) have found that aiptasia are usually there because of an excess of nutrients thus providing them with sufficient food..

A pic would help too to #1 ensure its really aiptasia and to judge the scale of the issue..

Frankly I find it funny that you have already tried many critters that can/will eat them but all have failed but you somehow have faith that one more will magically just work...
Click to expand...

My nitrates are high right now. My old test kit was expired and gave me false readings. Got a new test kit and found out they were high. Currently working on water changes to correct that issue. Also dosing some calcium to bring that back up. Here are my water params that I tested and posted in a different thread last week. The PH was also a little low, but water was tested at noon and I am running central air right now. So not super concerned with PH at this point.

SG 1.025
Nitrate 20 ppm
Phosphate 0
PH 7
Alk 9.9 dkh
Calcium 350 ppm
Magnesium 1320 ppm

I run a carbon and GFO reactor.

The reason I'm trying all these critters that naturally eat it is because I would rather find a natural approach at getting rid of it rather than using chemicals to kill it off. Why wouldn't I try something that naturally eats it? Not saying I don't want to fix the problem at its source, but the natural approach seems logical to me.
 
i agree that the issue is not just the aiptasia..I to had a aiptasia invasion a few months back, Of course you have to have some in your tank to cause this. But I changed some stuff around with my Refugium and DSB That are in my basement.. During doing this i did NOT DO ADEQUATE Nutrient export and not enough water changed. the aiptasia spun out of control.. I put preditors . CBB in the Big tank File fish in the coral grow out tank and Peppermint shrimp in the sump, Refugium and other tanks ...

Once they nutrient levels were in check and the above started munching down the issue totally resolved itself.. took about 6 week or so...

Quitters never win .....

SHORT VERSION
the aiptasia are taking advantage of a issue causing them to be Symptom and not the underline issue. You must talking it from several directions...

Good Luck
 
I've been gradually cycling my rock to a 40 breeder to kalk paste the stuff to oblivion. I'm just repeatedly hitting it until it appears clean, then it goes back to the display. My filefish is always eating it, but that's like expecting me to single handedly eat an entire corn field.
 
Get yourself a Klein's Butterfly fish. They will decimate them in a hurry. The only issue I've seen with Klein's is that they tend to like zoa's. Other than that, they love aiptasia like no other.
 
Stop feeding your fish as much. Think of the aiptasia as raw okra that nobody will eat if there is anything else on the table. Don't starve them, but back off a bit.

Peppermints need to be from the Florida Keys. Everybody says that theirs are from there, but you never know unless you got them direct. There are direct shippers that will get you the good ones. They will eat the ones out of the way before they come out in the open. It seems like they are doing nothing and then all of a sudden, they disappear really quickly as they need to move out and about to get the rest. They need to be drip acclimated and are really susceptible to being damaged by salinity and temp changes - these are about the only thing that I take my time to acclimate. Lastly, if you have high N or P (above normal reef levels), then they won't do much and will quickly die. IME, peppermints are a sure thing if all of this is correct.

Learn how to get them with a bit of kalk. Sometimes, even the biggest peppermints and fish won't get after the huge ones. Kalk paste can.

Lastly, once you get them under control, keep all of the critters around. Some folks sell their fish and peppermints and the aips come right back since they never can get to all of them.
 
I had a 150g reef with 100s of aiptasia too. File fish did nothing. Finally put 15 peppermint shrimp in and nothing for 3-4 days, then overnight basically all aiptasia GONE. Few month later and handful back but totally manageable. Good luck


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