Torching Aiptasia

[nanmer]

Would burning the remains, after manual removal, with a blow torch be an effective way of removing aiptasia? Hubby is a plumber and has a few different types of torches. Would burning the little pests cause any kind of spike in nitrates, amonia etc.?

[naesco]

Would burning the remains, after manual removal, with a blow torch be an effective way of removing aiptasia? Hubby is a plumber and has a few different types of torches. Would burning the little pests cause any kind of spike in nitrates, amonia etc.?

What don't you just buy a peppermint shrimp or do you have fish that eat them

[bowkry]

torch works great, also on mushrooms

[nanmer]

I have soooo many (bought live rock for a good price) that a peppermint shrimp could not keep up. I planned on getting rid of most of them and then buying a shrimp to maintain.

What don't you just buy a peppermint shrimp or do you have fish that eat them

[mark]

pickup up a micro torch that use butane, seems to work.

As for shrimp, they do work also and would love to have them, but can't seem to keep them any longer than a couple of months before they go MIA (both cleaner and peppermint).

[Treebeard]

Didn't work for me. It was a total waste if time.

torch works great, also on mushrooms

[naesco]

I have soooo many (bought live rock for a good price) that a peppermint shrimp could not keep up. I planned on getting rid of most of them and then buying a shrimp to maintain.

You will be surprised at how quickly the shrimp eat the stuff. If you are worried buy to but remember to acclimate them for two hours.

The problem with the torch is you will also kill the good stuff near the aptasia and the good stuff inside the rock itself.
You will also leave a residue from the blowtorch gases on the rock.

[Eyford01]

I also had aptasia and tried 2 peppermint shrimp, ate all my pods and stomatella and left the nems untouched, I tried torching a few but didn't like the residue, but being cheap and not wanting to pay for joes juice I tried boiling water applied with a turkey baster although a needle might work better, a couple took more than one application but as long as they aren't close to anything else you might harm it could work, at least it did for me

[Key Equine]

I had a few that my peppermint shrimp didn't eat, so I took a lighter to them until they were good and melted, then rinsed and brushed away the remnants with a toothbrush. When I put the rocks back in the tank, my peppermint shrimp went right to where I had burned the aiptasia and picked out whatever was left in the hole. It was very cool and worked like a charm. Never saw another sign of them...

[Myka]

I'm a huge fan of blow torches. Good for all sorts of pest killing! Including algae, majanos, aiptasia! If a blow torch doesn't work, then you didn't do a good job of it. You gotta roast them little buggers. You will cause a certain amount of ammonia spike, but if you only do one rock at a time in a decent sized tank it should be able to handle it. Personally though, I usually just setup a little Rubbermaid with powerhead and heater and "cook" the blow torched rocks for a few weeks afterward.

[fkshiu]

I'm a big advocate of using fire to solve many problems. Too bad everything reeks after the torching of the rock.

[nanmer]

After reading Myka's post and after a quick internet search, I found out I not only have aiptasia but also majanos. I have decided that I am going to run an experiment and try a few methods. I have a hypodermic needle and syringe, from my past life as a farmer. I shall stab some ... fry some ... and shrimp some!

[nanmer]

Another method I think that I will try ... manual removal of the lil brats and do a quick pass with the torch. This should (?) limit the damage to the rock. I will then give the area a good scrub with a toothbrush. I will be so good at removing them people will call me the nem whisperer LOL!

[no_bs]

Go get a small copper band buterfly, they are awsome at eating them. Solved our ap. issue. We had hundreds, look up our old post's for the pic's.

[burgerchow]

Here's what I did when I bought some xenia that was attached to a mushroom covered rock. Saw one of these pesty buggers coming out of a hole in the rock a couple of weeks after I placed into the tank. ( I had dipped the corals with Revive for about half an hour first, to make sure any other bad hitchhikers didn't survive) Lo and behold, one aptasia survived and started sprouting out. I've heard many different remedies on how to deal with these buggers. Didn't have any Joe's Juice that night, but I remembered some people used vinegar or lemon juice. Also remember reading that others used some form of heat, like hot water or blow torches. Not wanting to take the rock out of the tank and maybe damaging the corals, I opted to use boiling hot white vinegar. Just heat a little in the microwave and inject it into the aptasia with a syringe. The bugger shriveled up and died immediately.Basically I was using hot acid. Best of both worlds, and free.
Since then, have never seen another aptasia in my tank.

[naesco]

Go get a small copper band buterfly, they are awsome at eating them. Solved our ap. issue. We had hundreds, look up our old post's for the pic's.

You were lucky because they are very difficult to keep alive.
There was a recent post on this.

There are so many options to remove them that it doesn't make sense to get a copperband butterfly unless that is a fish you want to keep anyway.