aiptasia

[Amadod2]

Ok so i have aiptasia in my tank about 40-50 in a 75gal, im contemplating ways on getting it out, i have tried aiptasia-x, didnt work they came back. i cant remove the rock as my corals are fixed in them. as for adding peppermint shrimp i have a wrasse and a hawk fish, as for adding a filefish i have zoas and palys, and i have been told not even to waste my time on a copperband.

with this all said which route should i go???? what has worked for you guys?

[rsisvixen]

I've heard berghia nudibranchs are pretty good.

[Amadod2]

yes i heard they are, but i cant find them out here.

[Bugger]

I still have a couple left could ship what I got for free you pay shipping. They take months to fix the problem mine eat everything and are now starving to death

[Amadod2]

That sounds great! How much is shipping?

[newbie2]

Only thing that worked for me was to inject them with a solution of boiling hot vinegar with a syringe. Time consuming yes, but oddly satisfying

[asylumdown]

I say this with the utmost love for you and your tank - a long term solution to aiptasia involves one of the following:

1. ripping down your entire tank, drying/bleaching every piece of rock or equipment you own, then quarantining everything you put in that tank after it's set back up with pathological zeal. Not having them means keeping them out in the first place. That means not putting a single non-fish or non-living item (exposed coral skeleton, sand, rock, macro algae, what have you) in your tank that has come from a system with even a single aiptasia without first quarantining it long enough for any microscopic pedal lacerations or planaria to grow big enough to see with the naked eye. This rules out every single piece of LFS live rock, most LPS, and most everything from fellow hobbyist's tanks except SPS frags.

2. Finding a predator that eats them as fast or faster than they reproduce.

That is all. You have no other options.

None.

Zero.

There's no potion, no magic chemical, no injectable voodoo magic that will eliminate them from a tank 100% once you have them. Even berghia nudibranchs, which are about as effective of a predator as mother nature has ever seen fit to create, do not always get every last anemone. I had a bad Aiptasia infestation in 2012. Berghia took it out, but it took 8 months for the problem to get bad enough to spend the money shipping Berghia up from the states, and another 5 months for them "work" completely. That's over half the average lifespan of a salt water tank. Near the end, I was harvesting 20 nudis a day and selling them because they were starving to death. But they missed a single, teeny tiny, almost microscopic aiptasia in my sump. 12 months later, my aiptasia population measured in the tens of thousands again (even with a Copper Band Butterfly in the tank), and the nudis by that point had long since starved to death.

If you find a fish or a shrimp that eats them quickly enough to keep the population manageable (1 nem can create dozens to hundreds of pedal lacerations a day) then awesome, you're in a tiny, lucky minority. However, all the fish and shrimp that *might* eat them *might* prefer to eat things you paid for instead, or might give up the ghost and die horribly in front of your eyes because it was too cloudy last Thursday. You won't know until you've tried, regardless of how many forum opinions you get on the subject.

Also, in my opinion, you should always follow up advice to inject aiptasia with some sort of potion or chemical by asking the advice giver how long they've had aiptasia in their tank, and how often they have to 'treat' their aiptasia problem. Yes, you can make yourself believe you've dealt with the problem by injecting your first 10 visible aiptasia with lemon juice, "Joe's juice", or scalding water, but a) how many times a week do you need to do that to keep your corals from getting stung to death and b) how many months has it been since you treated the tank the first time? In my experience with Aiptasia, you can give yourself a temporary reprieve by messing with your water quality and spending hours a day trying to kill them with chemicals. But what seems like "success" in the short term is, in most cases, nothing more than than using chewing gum to plug a tiny hole as the concrete damn crumbles all around you.

If you're not willing to buy a possible predator because you think it's incompatible with things you've paid for, or spend 3 hours a night injecting anemones with toxic chemicals, then go the extra mile to find Berghia. It won't be cheap, and you might wait 6 months before you know if it's worked, and it still might not be a permanent solution no matter what you do. If you don't, the aiptasia will eventually kill everything that stopped you from buying the other predators anyway, and you'll end up tearing down the tank.

Anyway, I don't mean to sound harsh, but in your first post your essentially ruled out everything known to aquarists the world over with even the tiniest hope of combatting aiptasia, then asked how to fix the problem. Sadly, there's no spells or magic potions the internet has been hiding from you.

[neoh]

I have some pop up every so often. I just nail 'em with aptaisia-x and that one goes away, until another one pops up. They are sort of like mosquitoes around the water in the summer. You can do things to ward them away from you, or do things so it doesn't bother you, but you'll never really get rid of them.

[hpindy]

I put 4 peppermint shrimp in my tank when i seen the first aiptasia in my tank.. it was gone the next morning and i havent seen one since and that was 6 months ago.

[Aquattro]

None.

Zero.



I'm nominating this post as post of the month. Maybe year. :)

[Dearth]

It is the only reason why I keep peppermint shrimp in my tank I had an outbreak a year ago bought a bunch af peppermints and within 2 months my Aiptasia were gone.

This comes with a caveat however

****not all peppermints eat Aiptasia (I bought 6 and only 2 ate Aiptasia) and don't expect an overnight miracle I had a huge Aiptasia sitting in plain sight on a rock for almost a month and a half before it disappeared. Once it's all gone you have 2 options catch and return your peppermints to LFS or give to another reefer or secondly keep your tank well fed as if your shrimp aren't kept happy they can start munching on other coral.