Hello fire, bye bye aiptasia!!!!

[danceswithfish]

I have been injecting aiptasia with lemon juice and vineger (seperately) and it seems to work. There is just so many aiptasia in my tank that I will be about 70 years old (not that there is anything wrong with that) when I get them all killed.

I plan to go out tomarrow, buy a propane tourch and cook about 20 of the little suckers on a rock. I would repeat this after I am satisfied am parms are stable ie. there is no ammonia spike.

Can anyone forsee any catasrophic results

 

[eznet2u]

Been there, done that...works great. Stinks, but works great.

 

[jenglish]

I have done it with hydroids and aptasia. If they pop in your eye.... it fricking hurts. I recommend goggles :lmao:

 

[mfd574]

Why not just get some peppermint shrimp? We had an outbreak one time and put peppermint shrimp in our tank. Took care of them in a week or so!!

 

[JohnsonSBK]

great idea. i hate aptasia, just got rid of it myself pain in the a$$!

 

[danceswithfish]

My local fish store get peperment shrimp in once in a while and I am not big on getting stuff shipped.

So burn baby burn !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[PSam]

Another vote for real peppermint shrimp. Down side may be cost of a few of them, but the plus side is that they're in the tank, 24/7, eating the ones that you missed in between the cracks. After burning, if set on that, you still might grab two or three.

 

[JHemdal]

Wow - I had no idea people are still using torches to kill Aiptasia! When I was an aquarist at the Shedd Aquarium back in the 1980's, I remember the reef aquarist doing that, and I've always joked about it.....

The best control methods I know of (aside from not letting them get out of control in the first place) is calcium hydroxide slurry injections (with all safety precautions) or a good Australian copperband butterflyfish.

Jay

 

[epstein]

Pep shrimp get a vote as well....But if you have acans .......Watch em

 

[jon1985]

+1 for pep shrimp. When I started with a tank my friend gave me before he left for school it had a pep shrimp in it. I soon upgraded to my current tank and added some frags, didnt see the aptasia on them. I saw the pep shrimp pickin at the frags and freaked out. Later that night I noticed the aptasia. They where gon inside 2 days. Make sure they are peps and not camel shrimp.

 

[coralnut99]

I dunno. This may work for the ones you can see, but it's the ones you can't see that will come back at some point. This isn't so far removed from removing the rock and chiselling off the ones you can see. As suggested, peppermints are your best long-term solution. While a copperband may eat lots of them, you're talking about an animal that has a tremendous capability for reproduction. There's lots of little spaces a copperband can't get to. Peppermints are nocturnal and will scour rocks from every angle, visible or not.

 

[JHemdal]

I put one copperband in a 1300 gallon reef and it took out all the Aiptasia in 6 months or so, but then it also went after a 20# Tridacna. CB's are not without their own issues - hard to get good ones, difficult to quarantine, and may eat clams(grin). Still - the peppermint shrimp did nothing to control the large Aiptasia in that tank beforehand.

Jay

 

[sue711]

I removed my peppermint shrimp because they were tearing apart my LPS corals. I at first thought it was a rogue hairy crab, so I caught the crab but the destruction continued. The polyps on all of my dendros are shredded!! So the only thing left in my tank that could have been causing it was my shrimp, and out they went. I have since read that peppermints are really not considered reef safe.
Apitasia X is what I use now.

 

[TheH]

If you are going to toast aipistasia with a propane torch, be sure to record it and put it up here. It will give comfort to people with aipistasia infestations.

 

[kvosstra]

another (-)1 for peppermints - yeah they might go after a few small ones - but they dont specifically feed on Aiptasia, they steal food from corals, they tear at other corals, etc.

Kalk them or burn them seems like the way to go. Just know that there will be tiny ones that you cant see - I highly suggest a 10-20g tank to put the rock in after you have torched it, and use it to carefully look for any remaining pests.

 

[leeit2me]

I wonder if this would apply to getting rid of red bubble algae too??? I have alot on this one piece of rock and I want to torch it to a crisp!

 

[danceswithfish]

I bet it would work for buble algea, and maybe even a bad patch of hair algea lol.

The whole thing is the aiptasia are bigger then peperment shrimp and might even eat a small shrimp. Thats real. and there is too many for chemical treatment unless I have a couple years.

I am going to cook them (filming it of course) and then look to other methods for controll.

This is going to be great. I could probly use a lighter, but it will be a buch more satisfying with a torch.

 

[onionbagle]

best solution yet

 

[albano]

From my experience, ONLY caribbean peppermint shrimp work on aptasia. The others are a waste of time, and $. A few years ago, I had a million (not actual count) aptasias in my 130g, after trying EVERYTHING for months, I purchased about 30 PS from Reeftopia, within weeks they were all gone, and have not been back...a few PS are still alive and have never been a problem.

 

[laf-reef]

I've used a soldering iron on them with success... as previously posted they stink! I also recommend peppermint shrimp for controlling the ones you miss with the torch. Flame on!