Anyone with Aptasia

[luke33]

I just wanted to post this as i'm sure some of you will find it useful. I've had aptasia pretty much from the getgo of setting this tank up. 2+ yrs and the only real way of getting rid of it is to boil the freakin rock the aptasia is on. I've tried JJ, kalk paste, copperband, Pep's and nothing has worked. I've pry had 5 peps in the last year and i've gotten them from uncle bills or petland. Zero have done squat. I was in the reef over the weekend. First time in 6+ mths as i can't stand the place. Anyhow, they had a tank full of pep's. They sales guy was very nice and asked if i saw the pep's. I was aprehensive at first, as ime pep's were worthless. I said, show me. He found a rock full of aptasia (not hard to find there) and dropped it in. Within 30seconds, the pep's had ripped most of them out of the rock and were fighting over there carcus's. I was shocked to say the least. So i picked one up for my 75g frag tank. I put it in, and had a total of two aptasia's i could see in there. Today, one is gone and for fun i found out where the little pep was in the tank and threw the other frag with the aptasia right by him. WIthin one minute he was all over it and pulled the ap out and ate it. Just wanted to pass it along.

Luke

 

[ParadiseReef]

In my experience the Peppermints will eat the aiptasia when there's nothing else to eat (opportunistic) or when they're trained to... as in this case. It's my guess the Peppermints in that tank weren't fed anything but aiptasia. Keep an eye on them as they may not keep that taste for aiptasia and form a better one for your fish food...

James

 

[luke33]

Yea, i've fed them next to nothing and the aptasia have all been taken care of. Suposedly the one's that don't eat ap are from cali and the one's that do are from the caribean, but they look identical and most are the cali pep's around here. But who knows.

 

[diescreaming]

there are 2 kinds of peppermint shrimps, the one from the carribean(a little more red) are the ones you want, but they are often thrown in the same tank as the others, so if you want them to eat aptasia, ask the guy at your local pet store to drop some aptasia in there and see if they will eat, some just do not eat aptasia in the wild so they wont in an aquarium

 

[ParadiseReef]

True... I actually forgot about that...

 

[ParadiseReef]

glad to hear your aiptasia is taken care of....