Aptasia

A

alazo1

Premium Member
I know a lot has been written about it but this is a little weird.

I tried Joe's juice after some reading of archives here. My results were that they seem to have killed the aptasia but within a few weeks not only did they come back but there were a lot more then before. Has this happened to any of you?.

I had some peppermints that kept them in check until I added a fish to the tank. Sorry, I don't remember the type of fish but looks like a small grouper. This guy ate all 4 of them. If I can get rid of this fish I can buy a few peppermints that at least last time I had good success with.

I have 3 chromis, 1 tomato clown, 1 algea blenny , 1 yellow tang and the grouper type of fish. Short of starving the tank I don't know how to get this guy.

Albert
 
Ah, aiptasia...The bane of all reefkeepers.

I've had nothing but sucess with Joe's Juice however, yes, sometimes aiptasia will come back to haunt you. One thing that will help: you'll notice that after you hit them with Juice they turn into little blobs of...Well, they just turn into little blobs. Anyways, siphon out those little blobs, because that part is the oral cavity, where spores are kept and are very much still alive and ready to grow.

If you don't have any corals, try adding a copperband butterfly. There are problems with having one, though. Sometimes they'll ONLY eat aiptasia, sometimes they won't eat them at all if first introduced to a better food. Usually though, they'll eat aips.
 
Ah, aiptasia...The bane of all reefkeepers.

I've had nothing but sucess with Joe's Juice however, yes, sometimes aiptasia will come back to haunt you. One thing that will help: you'll notice that after you hit them with Juice they turn into little blobs of...Well, they just turn into little blobs. Anyways, siphon out those little blobs, because that part is the oral cavity, where spores are kept and are very much still alive and ready to grow.

If you don't have any corals, try adding a copperband butterfly. There are problems with having one, though. Sometimes they'll ONLY eat aiptasia, sometimes they won't eat them at all if first introduced to a better food. Usually though, they'll eat aips.
 
A buddy of mine took in a grouper. He got it in his mind to catch it and tried many different methods including chasing it around with a net.

He ended up doing it the old fashoned way using fishing line and a hook. He filed off the barb though. It worked ... it might not be the "best way", but its a way.
 
Wow, I can't believe you mentioned to fish it out. This is exactly what I did today. On the advice of my lfs. I got a #16 tri hook and dremeled out 2 of the hooks. Also filed the barb. Put a piece of scallop, got him on the second attempt. He's in the sump now. So glad to get this guy out..LOL

Albert
 
Joes juice works but i mixed up kalk in a almost paste solution and injected it in the mouth with a hypo needle and wow did that work. Apparently the pests don't like the sudden ph change. I also didn't get what is described above when using the kalk, but joes juice did leave the spores alive to infest the rest of the tank. When juicing these guys i'm not talking about a ph swinging ammount here, but rather cc's.
 
Aiptasia will regenerate from a few left over cells so it is virtually impossible to get rid of them with joes juice or kalk paste.

You may also find pepermint shrimp hit and miss. They worked for me, but did nothing for others. This may be because what we see as a single species, L. wurdmanii is actually a group of closely related species. Probably only some of the species actually eat aiptasia

Good luck.

Fred
 
I always had great luck with the pepermint shrimp until the died and I brought in some new rock. Aiptasia all over again.
 
I've had good luck with peps also. There is also a nudibranch, berghia, that eats them. The nudis usually aren't bothered by fish...pump inlets are another story though ;)
 
Berghia nudibranks have been less effective than pepermints in eradicating aiptasia.

I would try pepermints first.

Fred
 
I might have broken a record this weekend. I used JJ for Aiptasia and it kept comming back multiplied by five. Tired of the game I let it be for quite some time until it reached plague proportions.
Last week I replaced some snails and noticed they could not graze on the rock, every time a snail touched an Aiptasia the snail twitched and stayed in as if it was hurt, three days after my snails were dying (I blame the Aiptasias sting) so fed up with that I set up this weekend to kill them all.
I lost count at 400+ Aiptasias, by the looks of it I must have got 99% of them, I plan to continue hunting them at first sight until none returns.
 
This had to involve a beer or two also right?
Click to expand...

We went to a Christmas party that night so yes I did have a few:lol:

The main reason for me getting the hawkfish out was to get more of the peppermint shrimps. I never had a problem with aptasia until the hawkfish ate the shrimp so, I'm assuming that they kept them in check. I'll get a few more from the same place and see if it works.

Albert
 
Joe's Juice. Hot water works too. As far as any leftover cells I tried to vaccume the substrate, I will have to wait a few weeks to see what happens.

My CBB had no intrest in them, not much luck with Peppermints either.
 
Yeah Joe's Juice is good stuff, but like I mentioned, siphon out the blobs left over. Also, the "fishing" method doesn't work very well as a few cells are left over. Also, don't put it back in the sump, because it'll just get huge and start spitting out spores which will make their way into the display.
 
What do you think about UV? Do you think that UV will kill many if not most free floating cells? Of course after sucking up the majority.
 
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