aptasia running a muck in my puffer tank!

bulletcon

New member
Hi eveyone..Im currently running a 40g breeder tank with 2 medium size porcupine puffers..Inside the tank however, is a massive ammount of red aptasia and its still spreading..since i cannot get any shrimp to fix this and heard too many bad things about "Joes Juice", I have no idea for a solution..any help?
 
Ok then, let me say I have the same problem in my 100g with just one juv. dogface and some other fish. What can puffer-owners do about aptasia because nudibranchs won't work(gummy slugs for the puffer, Tusk, etc). Shrimp are what I feed my puffer everyday so that isn't happening. My rocks are getting covered by these things and all the good options I know about aren't possible.

I heard about butterfly fish eating them perhaps? My tank is pretty nice, for an aggressive tank anyway, maybe I could try one?

What are my options?
 
Use a needle to inject them with very hot water, or I think I've heard injecting with lemon juice also works.
 
Aptasia X - This stuff works instantly! No impact to my fish or corals because you are only shooting the actual aptesia.

It comes with a needle. You get about an inch or so away from the aptasia with the needle and spray the aptasia slowly. Within miniutes, it is dead and done. Since you have a lot of them, it may take you some time to get rid of all of them.

Copperband Butterfly works too, you may need to do both.
 
Copperbands are the most effective and natural method of Aptasia removal in my opinion. It is a real treat watching them work. Once they have cleared the Aptasia, they enjoy eating mysis and brine shrimp.
 
Boiling water worked for me. Use a syringe and release the water right at the base. My aptasia was gone within a couple weeks.
 
aptasia x is expensive - tried it; they came back. i use vinegar now but don't do to much as i've been told that can drop your ph. so far, no problems and it's worked as good as the aptasia x - better? press is still out.
 
Not recommending this necessarily, but when I treated my puffer tank with quinine sulfate, it killed off a forest of aiptasia.
 
Copperbands are the most effective and natural method of Aptasia removal in my opinion. It is a real treat watching them work. Once they have cleared the Aptasia, they enjoy eating mysis and brine shrimp.

+1 For a copperband butterfly, I used one in my 90g Softy Reef after using Redsea's Aptasia treatment (way to much work for a fat lazy old guy).

However after clearing up the aptasia it started to nip tankmates, so I moved it to the 240g puffer tank seems to get along with everbody in there.
 
Last edited:
I use a paste of mrs Wages' pickling lime. Use a sringe to put it on with power heads off and suck it out as needed and turn power head back on.
 
Back
Top