Nuke the tank. How?

[Gargamel35]

My tank has been overrun with Aiptasia and green leaf type plant.

I tried everything (Lemon juice, chemicals,...) and nothing worked. They are everywhere.

I was thinking setting up two tanks anyway, one for corals only and other with fish only. So now i'll move all corals in another tank and this tank will only have rocks, fishes and some sand on the bottom. That way i'll a lot more control over it.

How to get rid of Aiptasia in a tank with rocks and fishes only? Will a black out work? How long?

Can i take one rock at a time out of the tank, clean it (how?), maybe even let it dry out for couple days and then return it in the tank. If i would be doing this with one rock at a time, it shouldn't damage the fish (Amonia spikes, nitrate spikes,...)?

I'll take the sand bad out too.

What i want at the end is clean tank with rocks and fishes.

 

[ycnibrc]

If only fish then u can put Klein butterfly in and eventually they will clear the aptesia for u. If you take the rock out u will kill the aptesia together with the beneficial bacteria so when u put the rock back your tank will act like new cycle again plus if u only take 1 rock at a time the clean rock can get infest with aptesia again.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[Zionas]

How big is your tank?

Small tank- Look into some Molly Miller Blennies. Heard they eat aiptasia.

Larger tank-

Subgenus Roaps butterflies (Tinker’s, Marquesan, Mitratus, Burgess)

Yellow Pyramid / Zoster Butterflies

Longfin / Schooling / Singular / Masked Bannerfish (only H. Diphreutes is Reef safe though)




Or if you’re willing to risk corals: A Klein’s, Lemon, Mertensi,, Double Saddle, Tahiti, Dot-Dash, Auriga, Raccoon May be worth a try. I specifically left out Chelmon spp. due to their difficulty.


Personally if I had at least a 5 x 2 x2 150 gal I’d do a pair of Zoster or Pyramid Butterflies.

 

[Sk8r]

There's the butterfly recommendation --- Klein's will clean up on them. Sometimes (though I have no knowledge this will work with butterlfies) if fish of the species see another go after a food source, they may start to peck at the 'food' too.

Another species that will go after the pest is peppermint shrimp. They don't bother fish, but they can nip a polyp (ususally just one) from a coral to learn if it is food. Generally the answer is no and they leave it alone thereafter.

There are several watch-its with peps, which are my favorite choice of aiptasia killers.
(!) don't accidentally buy a camel shrimp, which are lookalikes. Google the type for pix so you know the difference.
(2) juvvies are most apt to pick up the taste for aiptasia. Buy at least three and ideally have the store owner demo that they will go for aiptasia. Six is not too many fco a big tank. I've never had them fail in their job. But again, don't overfeed the tank so that they 'fill up' on provided food.
(3) they will, I am convinced, pick one large aiptasia to leave alone, so that it produces babies. But eventually they out-eat the aiptasia's production rate.


Pick these over a chemical solution. The less 'stuff that poisons certain species' you can put in a tank, imho, the better, just on general principal.

 

[cody6766]

They take a while to get started (4-6 weeks), but bhergia nudis do a great job cleaning out aptasia. I"ve used them in two different tanks and had lasting results. The only downside is that it takes a little while for the population to get large enough that you see results. I bought mine from Salty Underground.