Apstatia In Your Aquarium A Good Thing

[mhhauser321]

Well I know all of you will probably flame me for this but at least here me out.

Its not my idea, I found it at Reefvideos.com by a Guy named Sean Wilson.

He called it Duplexium

This is the low down, After doing maintenance on a non modern aquarium for some time He started to wonder why it was so clean. The aquarium itself had a trickle filter with other various things, but he started to notice some things with the tank. In the overflow boxes of the tank there was apstatia and he realized that this apstatia was catching all the detritus and excess nutrients and eliminating this very efficiently. Almost like a apstatia farm that helped the tank, so he built this sump like setup to harness that power while still being a use-able sump for other things.


The link is here, its the second Video from the top left

ReefVideos.com

Pretty Interesting, I hope I did it Justice

matt

 

[reefnetworth]

hi Mat! sorry i dont download videos. but a Kenya Tree absorbs excess nutrients. and there are various (IMO&E) natural ways to rid floating detritus.
i would be courious to see his tank "if" an Apstasia got chopped in the return pump. :eek2:
did it mention anything about how he keeps them out of the display? and only in the fuge?
i have 1 true Pepermint shrimp that is Apstasia psychotic. i got him after i woke up the next day with fully cured Fiji, that had 26 of them on it.
in less than a week they were gone and one shrimp was pregnant! :lol: the other one got munched by a 6- Line Wrasse.
about a month later the 6-Line tryed to get a SilverSide from the tentacles of a 10" purple tip anemone.
funny how nature takes care of itself...kinda like the "what comes around" rule. :thumbsup:
sorry to ramble, but FWIW, i have had the "peppy" for over two years now, never see any Aps. and it cleans the small cracks of the rocks and a Mysis or two a day when it can catch em!
:smokin:

 

[akwtampa]

Best way to keep aptasia from spreading if you use this method is to use a good, strong UV light.. The only problem with that is the fact that UV is indescriminate killer of Everything that runs through it, good or bad..

I've got 80 watts on my tank, but I only run it once a week for about 8 hours, or for a week after adding a new critter.. When the tank was new, I ran it for like 3 months straight just to keep algae at bay.. really kept things clean..

my .02

 

[papagimp]

Interesting theory. Only thing I can really say is I'm glad somebody else is playing around with the idea and not me.

 

[a1amap]

Your link is broken. http://reefvideos.com/
This is a cool site with some neat ideas.
I had another reef member that had a 10 gallon aptasia tank. It was kept seperate from here main display. The water always stayed clean. When she took the tank down and washed/dried and refilled the 10 gallon the aptasia grew back. Hearty little buggers.

 

[greenbean36191]

It's not a new idea. IIRC there is a picture of an Aiptasia fuge in one of Anthony Calfo's books. I works, but so do other methods.

 

[mhhauser321]

Yes he made sure to attach a UV light before the water returns to the tank and he also said he was going to put a copper banded buterfly in there and some of those Apstatia eating shrimp.

matt

 

[ChuckLawson]

Matt, there's a fairly lengthy discussion on this in this forum, including a lot more details from the guy in the video (his RC handle is "mr.wilson"):

You can find it here.

 

[Reefbox]

I have been thinking about adding aiptasia to my main display system because they are such efficient cleaners and adding a copper band butterfly and berghia nudibranches to prey on them. It would be free food for the copperband and berghia.

 

[billsreef]

Public aquariums used to encourage the growth of aiptasia in fish displays for that filtering effect. In a reef tank, however, it's a mere matter of time before they get out of the filter and into the display tank.

 

[MCsaxmaster]

Agreed. This works, but growing more coral works too, and the colonization in the tank by most corals is easy to control. Not so with Aiptasia.

cj