Berghia eat aptasia? :)

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I have a 125 with a MASSIVE Aptasia overrun (Several Thousands)! I found two websites who claim to have 'the only natural fix' for aptasia overruns. {berghia.net and also saltyunderground.com} Can anyone give me any insight to this nudibranch fix? Has anyone tried this kind of a fix that you may know of? I have three pepermint shrimp, they seem to be chow'n down on the aptasia but I just have way to much aptasia for them to get it under control. Any help would be great! :) Thank you so much!
 
Yes, this nudi does eat Aiptasia and nothing else. However, many people that try to use them to rid their tanks of anemones have poor success. One of the biggest mistakes is adding them to a tank with predators. Wrasses, some angels, and many shrimp or even hermit crabs pose a threat. People also add just a few to a tank and expect them to eat all of the anemones which generally doesn't happen. Once the anemone population is pretty sparse the slugs starve to death and you need to step in and finish the job.

Dr. Kempf, the guy that first figured out how to breed these things, offered a good solution to get around this problem. Before you get the slugs, take a few heavily infested rocks from the main tank and put them in a smaller separate tank where you can actually breed the anemones by feeding heavily and occasionally cutting the larger specimens. When the slugs arrive, toss them in there and after a short time they should start breeding. After you have a small army of them, add them all back to the main tank at once. This helps increase competition between the slugs and gives you a better chance of them actually eating all of the anemones before they all starve to death.
 
That is a great idea. I used them with success but in retrospect, this idea is even better that the strategy proposed by the vendor.
 
<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=13961498#post13961498 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by greenbean36191
take a few heavily infested rocks from the main tank and put them in a smaller separate tank where you can actually breed the anemones by feeding heavily and occasionally cutting the larger specimens. When the slugs arrive, toss them in there and after a short time they should start breeding. After you have a small army of them, add them all back to the main tank at once.[/B]

Make sure that you don't have strong pumps/filters on the prop. tank. And, it may make sense to add almost all of the slugs to your display, but reserve some in the prop tank just in case.

I have read that the anemones can eat the slug if the slug falls into the anem, so don't just dump the slugs into the display, just in case.
 
When I bought mine from the LFS, I was given a precut pipette, and was instructed to suck them up in there and gently place them on my LR. I was also told that berghias are good at eating aiptasia, but I should still continue to use kalk on the bigger ones, due to the possibility of them being eaten. Oh and no peps, as they will go after the berghias as well.

It's also a long process so don't expect your aiptasia to disappear overnite.
 
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