Zoanthids and aiptasia

[ohioreef71]

I love zoas but I shy away because so many frags out there have aiptasias growing on them. Most of the time you can't see till you get home. I've had little success with aiptasia x. It seems to kill a few polyps and aiptasias come back. I recently did a tank upgrade and thought I had clean zoa colonies but I was wrong. What is everybody else doing?

 

[fshaqrmman]

I hear your frustrations! I am currently dealing with some small aiptasias in my polyp colonies. I have had pretty good success with all the pumps turned off and using Aiptasia X. I have also found a fine pair of tweezers works very well.

 

[KafudaFish]

Turn flow off.
Use a bamboo skewer dipped in pickling lime.
Insert skewer into the center of the oral disk, twist a few times and pull it out.
The aiptasia will slime up making the lime stick better for the next one.
Repeat until done.
Turn flow back on.

If any powder gets on the zoas simply wave your hand to brush it away.

 

[vargomat]

Solution - 1-2 Peppermint shrimp. They'll kill all but the biggest aiptasias (including the little guys behind the rocks).

Then they either stick around or die off themselves. Problem solved.

 

[ohioreef71]

I had peppermints in the past and they did the trick but they were super food hogs especially when target feeding my coral. I really want a shrimpless display. I had a copperband also that ate them up but slowly died wouldn't eat I felt horrible about that.