Aptasia
- Thread starter alazo1
- Start date
What exactly is your method of destruction. I am in your shoes. I have a big tank and it is full of this crap. I am at the point that I thought of pulling the large pieces of LR and scrubbing them under fresh water to see if that will take care of them. Although it will probably kill my LR. I to have 100's of these things now.
When I had my UV on the tank I never had these things. Nor the green bubble algae I have now.
PEOPLE:
If your Aiptasia problem has hit plague proportions, there's only a few things that I'D reccomend doing:
1. Throw in a few copperband Butterflies but be ready to take them out once they've cleaned out the tank. You can also throw in Racoon BFs too, they do a good job as well.
2. FORGET THE PEPPERMINT SHRIMP. They only eat the babies. I also have a theory that they don't actually eat the aiptasia, but rather they are immune to their sting and just make them hide.
3. Hit 'em with all the Joe's Juice you can buy. Buy a whole bunch of the Juice and just Nuke 'em.
4. Forget taking out the rock and rinsing it - that'll just kil the fauna and most likely still have some aiptasia spores left.
5. If none of this works, buy a dog or something.
If your Aiptasia problem has hit plague proportions, there's only a few things that I'D reccomend doing:
1. Throw in a few copperband Butterflies but be ready to take them out once they've cleaned out the tank. You can also throw in Racoon BFs too, they do a good job as well.
2. FORGET THE PEPPERMINT SHRIMP. They only eat the babies. I also have a theory that they don't actually eat the aiptasia, but rather they are immune to their sting and just make them hide.
3. Hit 'em with all the Joe's Juice you can buy. Buy a whole bunch of the Juice and just Nuke 'em.
4. Forget taking out the rock and rinsing it - that'll just kil the fauna and most likely still have some aiptasia spores left.
5. If none of this works, buy a dog or something.
Wrong. I personally have observed them eating aiptasia. I did not have any huge ones, but they sure ate the small to medeum sized ones.
That suggestion on other butterflies is actually a good one if you do not have other corals in the tank. There are a number of butterflies that will rid a tank of a plague. Of course, you need someplace to house it after its done.
Fred
RedSonja
Premium Member
IME freshwater won't kill aiptasia before everything else on your LR is long dead. I left some small aiptasia from pedal lacerates in tapwater to see how long they'd live. FIVE DAYS in chlorinated tap water. And I wouldn't guarantee they wouldn't grow back once the rocks were back in saltwater either, we left LR from an infested tank out of water for months, then soaked in limewater for days. It took a few months but the little buggers came back. I hope you can get peppermints to eat 'em now that the hawkfish is out of the tank.
-Sonja
RedSonja
Premium Member
They are, but they are also tasty snackage for fish and crabs, and they're so small they never win in a nudi vs. powerhead contest. I've heard that taking infested rock out of the tank to a dedicated nudibranch tank w/ no predators or pumps works. I hope it does else we're trashing 100+ lbs of very nice LR rather than risk getting aiptasia in our new tank when we get it set up.
-Sonja
Volcmreefer
New member
I have had the best results with injecting warm kalk paste into the sucker. Then siphoning it out when it dies. GOODLUCK!
RedSonja
Premium Member
Yeah, I've done this too, and it makes them go away for a few days then apparently the full-size ones come right back. One thing I'm trying now, in addition to peppermint shrimp until I can get things set up for a nudibranch tank, is to cover the larger aiptasia with small rocks or pieces of Chaetomorpha. The theory is the aiptasia will move on top of the rock or algae and then you can pull it out of the tank. Peppermints apparently won't eat large aiptasia but if I can get the large ones out hopefully they'll eat the small ones. Very frustrating, I'm just glad this is just in our QT and not the display tank!
-Sonja
4 days into 2 new peppermints and no sight of them. I may have to wait a bit longer for them to get comfortable. Also, this time they were fairly small compared to the bigger ones I originally had. I may get a few more from another store. I'll keep updating.
thanks,
Albert
thanks,
Albert
I have tried it all and the only way I ever got rid of it was adding a Raccon butterfly and a Pearlscale Butterfly to the tank. I have had a CBB in the tank for over a year and he never touch the aptasia or my corals. The pearlscale did ok, but the Raccoon cleaned them out in no time. The down side is they both like LPS. I had several torch corals in the tank and they ate all but one. The Pearlscale is the worst culprit, but i have caught the Raccoon now and then. They haven't bothered anything else. I will take the trade off with if they will keep the aptasia out of the tank. It was killing off most of my corals anyway.
Grey Reefer
New member
I had a problem with aptasia when I set up a 20g Nano reef. Live rock came loaded with the little bastards. I got a pair of peppermint shrimp and boiled some R/O water filled up a baster and hit the ones I could see with boiling water. The Shrimp took care of the rest. No problems since.
Grey Reefer
New member
Thanks for the welcome.
Like I said I would try boiling water and squirting the ones you can see the heat should cook'em real nice like.
Like I said I would try boiling water and squirting the ones you can see the heat should cook'em real nice like.
