Aiptasia control

[asylumdown]

Once aiptasia are in a system, they're next to impossible to eliminate completely. They're used as a model organism in science research for a reason...

You can check out this poll from a while back to see what people have tried and how successful they were:
http://www.canreef.com/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=98808

That said, the way I look at it you should approach them hierarchically. Not every control method is appropriate for every tank, and there things that you can do but are less than ideal for several reasons. Here's my hierarchy, and why:

step 1. Berghia nudibranchs - they are the most expensive, but also the most effective with the least side effects. I say they should be tried first because peppermint shrimp, if they fail to eat your aiptasia, most certainly will eat your berghia, so if you try peppermint shrimp first you're shooting yourself in the foot unless you can get the shrimp out if they fail. Depending on how large your tank is, it can take a while for berghia to reach critical mass. You need to give them a good three months to do their thing before you consider them either a success or failure. The sample size is small, but there was an 80% failure rate with berghia if predators such as peppermints were added first, compared to a 67% success rate with Berghia if there were no predators present. You also need a large aiptasia problem for berghia to make sense, because there needs to be enough aiptasia to support at least 2 or 3 generations of increasing numbers of berghia. The visual effect of this is quite striking: for the first 1 to 2 months, it seems like nothing is happening and you never see the nudis and the aiptasia might actually get worse. However, once critical population masses have been reached and your 2nd and 3rd generation start to mature, entire rocks will suddenly be cleared of aiptasia over night. It advances in a wave until they're all gone. You'll need to help the nudis out by moving some to the overflows and the areas of your sump you need them in, and as the aiptasia population crashes you'll start seeing nudi's floating around your tank at night as they let go of the rocks to try and find food. You can catch them and sell them at that point. I made 3x what I paid for my starter population by selling them when I ran out of aiptasia.

Step 2. Peppermint shrimp - If after 3 months you haven't seen the berghia again and the aiptasia problem has not improved/gotten worse, these guys seem to be the least risky second option, with the least number of ethical concerns. By and large this is the most common thing people use to try and control aiptasia. According to the poll they have a similar success rate as berghia, approximately 67%, but I'm hesitant to put them on the same level because the sample size for berghia was so small. I suspect that if more people had tried Berghia first, it would have had a higher rate of success.

Step 3. An appropriate fish predator - This is tricky because not all fish are appropriate for all systems. If yours is a zoanthid tank, you really don't want to put a file fish in there because there's a good chance it will eat things you paid for. Butterfly's can be difficult to acclimate, have a high mortality rate (and thus have ethical drawbacks), may not be reef safe depending on what 'reef' means to you, and have minimum tank size considerations. However, a proven aiptasia eating copper band butterfly that also eats prepared foods and is a healthy weight is worth its weight in gold in any reef tank in my opinion. Plus they're awesome fish.

84% of people achieved successful aiptasia control with a matted filefish (though many have stated obvious drawbacks and side effects), 69% reported success with a copper band butterfly, and 80% reported success with a raccoon butterfly. Take that last one with a grain of salt, and the total sample size is 6. It's hard to say if a raccoon BF is actually any better of an aiptasia predator than a CBB.

I suspect some of the failures of the CBB were cases where they were added to tanks when the aiptasia problem is already out of control, as I've noticed that my CBB doesn't like to eat aiptasia after they reach a certain size. After berghia cleared my display and most of my sump, I added a copper band. The berghia missed a single aiptasia in the sump before they all starved or were sold, and now a year later my sump and my overflows are aitpasia gardens, but I've only got 2 or 3 largish aiptasias in the display. I credit the CBB for that.

Step 4 - manual removal using one of the chemical methods available (calk paste, joes juice, some acid you inject etc.). Based on the poll they all have darn near 50% success rate, which is pretty crappy considering that it's effort that you are personally investing, can potentially mess with water chemistry, and can require a tremendous amount of time and muscle work on your part to see success. Generally speaking, any time you ask the human owner of the tank to fill the ecological role of pest predator, it's going to be a frustrating and inefficient experience. If you've got 1 or 2 aiptasia, I'd maybe try that method first, but don't be fooled in to thinking it worked when you don't see the aiptasia the next day. They can regenerate entire animals from a single cell, so what is more often the case is that where you 'killed' it with some substance, 3 or 4 teeny tiny little baby aiptasias sprang up, but wandered off before they were big enough to see (they can move quite far in a short period of time). For a month you think you've got the problem licked, then suddenly you notice two more on the other side of the rock and you think you just missed them. From that point on it's next to impossible to stay ahead of it manually, and 6 months later you'll have more aiptasia than rock, you'll hate your tank, and all you've really done is helped them.

Don't even bother wasting money on one of the ridiculous aiptasia zapper devices out there. According to the small sample size of the poll they have a 100% failure rate. They sound like a good idea, but they're expensive and in reality they never work right. The only aiptasia they are capable of completely killing are ones that are polite enough to bee growing on the glass completely accessible on all sides. The second you turn on the juice, any aiptasia in the rock retract like lighting, meaning the best you can do is singe some tentacles.

I'd say a better method if you've only got one aiptasia on one rock is to completely remove the rock and sterilize it, while taking care to not disturb that anemone in the process. No piece of live rock is worth the trouble these things cause, and after it's bee dried, boiled, dipped in bleach, what have you, you can re-use the rock. You still might not get them as aiptasia move a surprising amount, leaving tiny little pedal lacerations behind them everywhere they go, but if I had exactly 1 aiptasia and it was small, complete removal of that rock would be my choice.

[LoJack]

Now that's a thorough reply. Way to go Asylum!

And I'd have to agree, there isn't much there to dispute at all … those are the facts people.

My piece is that the only success I've had is with a copper band as well. I have never tried the berghia method, because with my location, they are even more expensive to try and locate and ship up here. But as with most butterfly's, my Copperband didn't make it until the job was done, and I'm dealing with a full revolt of Aiptasia now.

He had reduced my aiptasia from hundreds … to not visible. But after he perished, there must have been some little ones in some deep dark crevices I couldn't see … because they mounted a comeback.

I've been on the lookout for a new copper band ever since … but they are tough to find eating, and if they aren't eating frozen in the lfs … the fail rate is like 99% with these beautiful fish. They are devoted though, I'm a picky eater … but not picky enough to starve myself to death lol

[ocean diver]

Thank you everyone for the thoughts on this problem with Aiptasia, I will keep you all posted as to who or what wins the fight!!!!!