At the End of My Rope

[asylumdown]

Over a year I spent over 1200 dollars on Berghia nudibranch's when you consider shipping. I had a similar problem in a 90 gallon - the aiptasia had reached plague proportions and it seemed like everything I did was only making the problem worse.

My take on Berghia is that in a mature reef tank with all the types of mechanical filtration you probably have is that they're probably not going to be worth the exorbitant expense. They're easily the most expensive 'solution' to aiptasia, but in a tank your size, with the number of aiptasia you have, you will literally need hundreds of Berghia to make a dent. The companies that sell them claim they will breed in your tank, but my experience did not reflect that. There are about a dozen little critters that love to eat their eggs in any one mature reef tank, and I'm pretty sure that Berghia's go through a pelagic larval stage that means creating a self sustaining colony in a tank with a sump, skimmer, any sort of mechanical filtration, etc. is not possible. So unless you're willing to start your own little aiptasia farm in a smaller secondary tank and raise Berghia's in more conducive conditions, you're probably never going to be able to afford the number of nudibranch's you'd need to get ahead of the problem if it's as bad as mine was. Raising them on your own is of course an option, and there's lots of instructions on how to do it online. However, while it is in theory "easy" to raise berghia, I find it's "easy" on the same level that raising clown fish fry is "easy". The rarity and cost of each nudibranch really is a testament to how few people can or would bother.

Either way I feel your pain. My aiptasia problem was only solved by the breakdown of my tank, but if I had kept it, I would have gone either the Butterfly fish or filefish route. If you've got the kind of aiptasia that reproduce at the slightest irritation (and I'm convinced that there is a type that's more likely to do this), then chemical solutions won't work either (I tried them all).

Good luck!

[Mechaninano]

I've got 2 90 gallons so I boiled the rock for one of the tanks (it was INFESTED, no saving it). Now, I'm just waiting for it to leech out all of the bad by product and I'll be rolling again (except for the 1 hitch-hiker that managed to elude me on the bottom of my toadstool