What are my options??
 

I have quite the aptasia farm in my tank that yes, I have neglected and let get out of control. I bought a filefish a few weeks ago, but he loves the GSP and isn't touching the aptasia.

Other options are a Copperband or peppermint shrimp. As much as I'd love a copperband, I think my other fish are too aggressive to add one at this point.

I had peppermints in the past, but I am sure my yellow coris wrasse made meals out of all my shrimp (cleaners, fire and peppermints).

Using chemical treatment on the aptasia is not really an option as I have way too many, at this point, I need to get them under control in my DT. Then figure out the sump and overflows....

Soooo - what to do????

A wrasse will make short work if berghias as well... Sux watching $15 mouthfuls

That Aptasia cattle prod looks like a lot of fun..

http://www.marinedepot.com/Majano_Wa...FIMIMW-vi.html

Not sure if anyone in Canada carries it.

I had a majano wand, theres a hard learning curve with it and those aiptasia/majanos that are in hard spots to reach just stay alive (especially the ones that are growing deep in crevices or on the underside of rocks) and I think I had about a 50% success rate in actually killing them, some looked dead but sprung back up within a week or so. Once the filefish finishes off the stuff he likes, he might decide to go after the aiptasia. I found my filefish didn't like the larger ones, so I nuked those with some sodium hydroxide and he took care of the little ones. He also ate all my zoanthids before trying out the aiptasia.

I have had a Pearlscale Butterfly in each of my tanks for several years now, and they keep them totally clean of aiptasia (where I once had many hundreds). You can read the 1st 7 or 8 posts in my journal link below where I mention them. Much easier to keep than Copperbands (tried them, too), but they also don't bother my corals (contrary to popular opinion).

However, being a butterfly, you do need to quarantine (prazi and hypo treatments) them and train them on regular fish food. If you just plunk them into your DT, they will most likely die sooner than later. I can give a few more tips on keeping them if you are interested.

So if you are up to that, they are nice looking fish, great community tank mates, and a permanent solution to your aiptasia problem.

If you go the Butterfly route, source it from Albert Dao. Got mine from him, very healthy, already treated. Highly recommended.

I have so many of them, I need long term control as I don't think I'll be able to fully get rid of them!

Well I am ok with him controlling the GSP, but it will take him a while to work through it all. I don't have any zoas but he just looks at the aptasia and moves on. I cheer him on when he's close, but he keeps passing it up.

Therein lies my challenge. I shy away from a QT tank as I was so unsuccessful with it, caused a huge amount of stress on me and my family, I shut it down. I may still have the tank somewhere, I could always try again. I'd love a butterfly, one of my fave fish, but its for the reasons you note above I've never attempted.

Albert is a fish guru, I'll perhaps touch base with him and see what he has available.

I've tried Bergias, not sure what happened to them, into the tank they went, never saw them again. The wand, or any other chemical treatment likely is not an option, simply because there's sooooooooooo many of them!! I pulled my standpipe out of my main overflow and was so disgusted at the amount on there. I scraped them off into the sink, gross jelliness of goo.

What wrasse eats them? I have a melanarous, yellow coris and Christmas wrasse. None of them have gone near them.

When I first got the butterfly from Albert, it was reluctant to eat for the first day as well. Albert had already trained it to eat mysis. When it did start getting hungry, it was too slow compared to its tank mates and got nothing. I started feeding it through a pipette and all has been good since then. I cannot reccommend a copperband more for aptasia. Beautiful fish and does the job. Hope this helps.

aptasia
 

i've seen my wrasses put berghia in their mouths and spit them out.i recently put in 3 banner fish in my tank and they cleaned up all the aptasia they could reach

I think with such a huge amount you will need to go with multiple options, I use aptaisax on ones I can see and get butterflies to finish them off, or maybe your filefish, you may need to remove some things for now to get him eating it. Wrasses don't seem to do anything...