Never thought I'd say this...

[asylumdown]

But I think I might have actually won the war against aiptasia. I'm feeling an inappropriate amount of glee over this.

I went to such crazy lengths to prevent getting aiptasia in this tank because of how utterly and completely they ruined my last one. I spent probably 3 grand trying to get them out of my old 90 gallon, and for my efforts I wound up with a tank that was so infested you couldn't see the rock anymore, easily 10,000 plus anemones.

When the first one popped up in this tank I thought I acted swiftly and aggressively enough to nip the problem in the bud, but it was in the sand, and by the time I saw it, it must have walked itself half way across the tank, leaving little copies of itself as it went. By the start of fall, I probably had over 1000 aiptasia, with some rocks starting to look just like the rock in my old tank.

Instead of wasting time or money on any of the chemical cures like I did last time, I just went straight to the Berghia. They didn't work in my 90 gallon, but that wasn't the most stable of systems. I ordered 20 from Salty Underground and they arrived on November 16th. They went in, and disappeared. I thought they must have all either died or been eaten as the aiptasia problem kept getting worse and worse until right around christmas (I think I even posted on here saying they were a waste of money!), when all of the sudden I woke up and noticed that the mother of a whole aiptasia nest that was stinging an encrusting SPS that came on my rock had vanished. Then the next day, two of her babies disappeared. Within a week the face of that rock was clear of aiptasia. Then on new years day I found several utterly tiny, baby berghias in my sump, so they're clearly successfully breeding. Now I can't shine a light in my tank at night without spotting 3 or 4 of the nudibranchs (I counted 7 big fat ones a few days ago), and every day it seems like another 10% of the anemones disappear. I'm going to have to start giving them away soon!

This is the most satisfying thing that's ever happened to my tank, by a wide margin.