Best Butterfly

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mgraf

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I have a 120 gallon mixed reef. Over the last few months, I have been battling aptasia. I've Joe juiced and aptasia xed until I cant stand it and still some remain from the areas of rock I cannot get to, I have read that butterfly fish would gobble them up. I have some credit at the LFS and was wondering which butterfly would be best for me to have him order in to help eat aptasia?
Thanks
 
You could do some peppermint shrimp instead. Theyre cheap, reef safe, and will eat aiptasia. The butterflies will most likely nip your coral. If youre deadset on getting a butterfly, you could try a copperband, theyre great for aiptasia control and generally reef safe.
 
I've had great luck with copperbands as aptasia eaters. Had one clear a tank in the matter or a few weeks. Unfortunately it never took to frozen and was lost a few weeks after running out of aptasia. I find most other butterflies risky in terms of their appetite for coral. Kleins butterflies are reef safe but have shied away from the majanos they are employed to eat. Don't know if they will touch aptasia though; the tank they are in only has majanos.
I also have experience using double saddles for majano removal. A pair of them stripped a ~200 gallon tank completely clear of them in less than a week. After that, they destroyed several small colonies of euphilia before they were removed. Haven't seen a majano since, though!
Raccoon b'flys get big and I'm sure have a wonderful appetite for coral.


Peppermints are worth a shot too, however they won't eat the larger ones. If you manually nuke the large ones, the peps will take care of the little guys. This tactic works in smaller tanks but you may never get there if your tank is large and/or has intricate rockwork.
 
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Yeah copperbands are pretty finicky, i used some peppermints in my 125 and they got rid of the few aiptasia i had in a matter of days.
 
Yeah its still the present possibility of them picking at your corals and inverts. They are a very interesting fish however.
 
Never had any luck with pepermints, they always come up missing. I think the aptasia are eating them. I currently have a matted filefish who is just happy eating myisis. Maybe I am not patient enough but, he has been in there for a couple months and I have never seen him even nip at an aptasia. Not rushing into anything else yet, just looking for advise.
 
Peppermints and filefish seem to only like aiptasia if they are hungry. Try not feeding the tank for a couple days. Be warned though that the file may start to eat coral at this time.
 
I've never once seen my filefish eat an aptasia or majano, yet after a few months, every one of te hundreds I had disappeared, so....
 
Aptasia tend to be a food source of last resort for most of the critters mentioned above. My best success I had in dealing with them was when I added several Peppermint Shrimp and fed the fish lightly and slowly so they ate every last bit of food, leaving nothing for the Peppermints to get. Eventually the aptasia were all gone...I'm assuming the Peppermints got hungry enough to eat them. Eventually the Peppermints all vanished as well, which was disappointing. That was several years ago and I've been running aptasia-free since.

Good luck.
 
Tried butterflies (enjoyed my milli's extensively), peppermints (got eaten by my mystery wrasse), Filefish (enjoyed every sps I had)

Tried kalk paste, Majano wand, Joe's Juice

Gave up, gutted the tank, froze my rock, re-cycled and started over, much easier imho.
 
savemyreef said:
Klein's Butterfly work very well. They are a lot hardier than a Copperband Butterfly.
Click to expand...
They're also not reef safe most of the time. Peppermint shrimp have worked very well for me. Like SD Guy reported with his file fish, I never actually saw them going after the aiptasia, but one day I realized they were all gone.
 
Hi, I was getting ready to move the contents of my 90 to the 120 and kind of let the aoptasia multiply. I looked for alternatives to Aiptasia-X and went with 9 peppermint shrimp, they quickly ate all of them even a couple of large ones. That was 5 months ago and I have zero problems today, there are still 2 or 3 shrimp around and they are now very large and great to look at. Forget the butterfly.
 
Hi, I was getting ready to move the contents of my 90 to the 120 and kind of let the aiptasia multiply. I looked for alternatives to Aiptasia-X and went with 9 peppermint shrimp, they quickly ate all of them even a couple of large ones. That was 5 months ago and I have zero problems today, there are still 2 or 3 shrimp around and they are now very large and great to look at. Forget the butterfly.
 
I had a Klein's once. It didn't eat aptasia but it did eat every polyp off of my giant toadstool one day while I was at work. I caught him and returned him.

I just do seek and destroy missions with kalk paste in a syringe every other month or so. I can't ever seem to get them all and they eventually return. Oh well, it wouldn't be a hobby if it didn't keep you busy :)
 
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