Aptasia Removal ??????

T

TandN

New member
In over a decade of having reef tanks I never had any issues with them. Me and my wife had our first child and now have a second on the way in a few months so the tank went to crap to say the least. We now have about 20 aptasias in the tank ranging from tiny to HUGE !!!!! I have Stop aptasia gonna try it out but was wondering a few things also. Would the following stuff work.
1.Taking thr rock out and boiling it for a hour ?
2.Boiling it with the stop aptasia in the water ?
3. Torching the areas with the aptasia ?

Which of the three would be best ? I have to get my mystery wrasse out of the tank so I can throw in some peppermint shrimp. He ate 4 cleaners I tried introducing into the tank a while back. But from what I read they wont touch the LARGE aptasia. Is that true ?

TIA
T&N
 
I just got some Joes Juice today and nailed 4 of them before my eel tried to eat my hand. Seems to have worked right away though. Was cheap, less than 15 bucks and according to other posters, doesn't affect the rest of the tank.
 
I've had to deal with them before. I found two things that work best for me. One is to get some kalk, and mix it with a little water to make a runny paste. Then get a syringe and shoot it on the aiptasia. You have to be careful as this will increase your ph.

I've also, pulled the rock out and burned them with an lighter. It seems to work really well, just sometimes you can't get the rock out.

My copperband will not eat big aiptasia, so I had to kill the big ones but the copperband keeps everything under control now.
 
Thanks guys much appreciated for the replies.

I have had 12 diffrent CBB and they never live past a couple of months and I have fish with me since my first tank over a decade ago. I have tried all the tricks on keeping them blackworms and all. Some of these suckers are HUGE lol. I lost tens of thousands in sps in this tank due to a salt I was beta testing for a company and was the begining of the end to this tank so theres a handfull of acans in the tank and thats it right now so the torch idea is possible. I am slowly sucking out my sb anyway so I guess once all the sand is out I will take the rocks out and torch them one at a time and siphon out the rest of the sand thats left under the rocks. Meanwhile I will see if I can intrduce a CBB in the meantime. And also try the aptasia stop also.
 
If you can take the rock out that helps. I have had them and manjo problems before. My best attempts were using salt right onto of them. It kinda burns them like a slug.
After i salted them i pried their base off the rock and I had good success.
 
If you can get away with it

I usually take out as much rock as possible and dry them up especial the ones loaded with them then the rest are easy to get at then I just take a paring knife to the rest if possible
 
When you dry it out how long do you let it dry for ? I was thinking of taking the rock out boiling it for 20 min. Then let them dry for a couple of hours rinse and put back into the tank so I can get most if not all the rock done in one day any thoughts ?
 
Apatasia Removal

Apatasia Removal

I have heard and read that Berghia Nudi's will only eat Aiptasia. If you Google Berghia Nudi, a lot of site will come up with breaders who will ship.
 
TandN said:
When you dry it out how long do you let it dry for ? I was thinking of taking the rock out boiling it for 20 min. Then let them dry for a couple of hours rinse and put back into the tank so I can get most if not all the rock done in one day any thoughts ?
Click to expand...

I am not sure, but this process would kill not only the pests but also the good bacteria thus leaving the rock full of dead bacteria which will turn in to nitrate, wich will cause algea problems later. Shouldnt you take aportion of the rock and "cook" it. Plus if you do it all at one time you would have a huge amonia spike killing everything. Just my 2 cents.
 
reel simple load up on as many pepermint shrimp as possible,they will eat the aeptasias but it may take a couple of weeks....first you will think you wasted your money but by week 3 wow look no more bad guys......i had a huge problem in my 260 and tried butterfly fish only for them to die and then threw 10 shrimp in there and well no more aeptasias
 
I am looking for a or several berghia nudibranches. I have 15-20 aiptaisia inn the display tank and 100- 200 in my overflow. I have tried Aiptasia X seemed to shrink them up for a week then they were right back. I'm curious how many berghias I would need. Also where would I find them
 
Have any of you had success with an aiptaisia eating filefish? I have recently added one, three weeks ago, but not observed any of my aiptaisia populuation disappearing. I am a bit disappointed. It is a cool fish though...
 
I have had success with apastia X and peppermint shrimp. I have heard from my LFS that there are 2 types of peppermint shrimp, from 2 different regions. 1 eats apastia readily one doesn't. I can not remember the regions he mentioned.
 
Pickling lime around $3 for one pound at walmart etc.
Make a paste apply with a bamboo skewer sticking into the mouth twisting and then pull it out. The apastia sticks.
 
I suppose if you don't care about the rocks drying them / boiling them would easily kill the aiptasia - but everything else on the rocks would be killed. My experience with coral banded butterfly's - they do well for a few weeks and mysteriously die (other butterfly's do fine but don't eat aiptasia) - Peppermint shrimp are hardy but will eat anything, food, zoos, aiptasia - they may or may not eat the problem. My experience with chemical cures has been this - it kills the intended aiptasia quickly and thoroughly - but not before the aiptasia can send out its spores... 10 more replace it in a month. I've used bottle after bottle, same result.. my aiptasia got to such a monumental level that they were killing off my zoos, corals, small fish - I literally had high hundreds - to low thousands... I bought and cultured berghia's started with ten and now have over a hundred... they work and work well (if you can keep them alive... like a moth to a light they have a tendency to move towards pumps and filters - they really don't do well with too much water motion)...but I digress - they work well over time... they are slow and methodical. If you can keep them out of the filters, 2-4 berghia would kill all of your aiptasia in a few weeks... but then they would die. good luck -
 
a.stebel said:
I have had success with apastia X and peppermint shrimp. I have heard from my LFS that there are 2 types of peppermint shrimp, from 2 different regions. 1 eats apastia readily one doesn't. I can not remember the regions he mentioned.
Click to expand...

anyone know the region? im planning on getting 1 but if it doesnt eat aiptasia its not worth it
 
KafudaFish said:
Pickling lime around $3 for one pound at walmart etc.
Make a paste apply with a bamboo skewer sticking into the mouth twisting and then pull it out. The apastia sticks.
Click to expand...

+1 for pickling lime (Mrs. Wages). I had a ton of aptasia, but a strong solution of the pickling lime seems to be the best method I've used. I've tried Berghias, Peppermints, too. HTH.
 
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