Quote:
Originally Posted by monocus
inject them with lemon juice,and smother them with a kalkwasser paste.attack them about 2 hours after feeding in the morning-do not do this at night or they will release daughter cells around the base of the foot.
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I don't think there's a specific time at which attempting to kill an aiptasia will be more or less likely to trigger it to release planula. They release them in response to stress or when they're threatened, so I don't think it matters if you inject at noon, or midnight, if you trigger their stress response, they'll release planula.
Also, they're already releasing daughter cells regardless of if you attack them or not. I've had the mis-pleasure of watching how one aiptasia can turn in to a colony of aiptasia on a pane of glass in my tank - the mother aiptasia walks a few inches across the pane of glass, and behind it, a little garden of tiny baby ones sprout. It's called pedal laceration, and it's frustratingly effective. Then if the mother aiptasia stops moving, dozens of other little tiny baby ones will start to sprout from the base of the mother, then move away. This is happening on your rocks, only the little babies that sprout up are much harder to see until they're big enough to have already left their own trails of aiptasia cells behind them.
Basically, if you can see one aiptasia in your tank, you've got dozens and you just can't see them yet. If you can see 4 or 5 aiptasia, you've probably got at least a hundred. The best thing to do is get something that biologically controls them, like berghia, peppermints, or one of the fish that's known to eat them if they're appropriate for your system. If you decide to assume the sole role of 'aiptasia predator' in your tank, you're going to spend countless frustrating hours, and you'll never win. They can regenerate from a single cell, so most things that you can smear or inject on them only causes the mother anemone to melt down, to be followed a couple of weeks later by 4 or 5 smaller ones that sprouted from the few cells at the base that inevitably didn't die.