Aiptasia Taking Over My Tank!

[juliehodson]

Hi there,

Ive been in Holland for 6 months and when I got home my tank was in a mess. Although my sister looked after the fish well enough aiptasia have just gone crazy. there is some on every single piece of live rock and i couldnt possible inject every one of them.

should i just take out the rock and sit it in a bucket of lemon juice or something? I have pictures but im not sure how to post them.

please help!

thanks x

 

[l337dave]

Hi there,

Ive been in Holland for 6 months and when I got home my tank was in a mess. Although my sister looked after the fish well enough aiptasia have just gone crazy. there is some on every single piece of live rock and i couldnt possible inject every one of them.

should i just take out the rock and sit it in a bucket of lemon juice or something? I have pictures but im not sure how to post them.

please help!

thanks x

how big is that tank? - I had a filefish that could eat them all day long. I know people have had success with copperband butterflys too.

Peppermint shrimp only seem to eat little ones - keeping the population in check as it was.


dave.

 

[SkiFletch]

Use photobucket.com to host pictures . I'd get a syringe and lemon juice and/or joes juice and go to battle

 

[juliehodson]

hmmm i dunno if this will work but its worth a try lol!

the tank is about 27 gallons. 3 1/2 feet long. there are so many of them. i just know i would miss some with the syringe (apart from the fact im scared of needles heehee)!

Im thinking of tryin to get the biggest ones with the syringe then get some sort of aiptasia eater for the rest. so do you think a copperband butterfly is better than a peppermint shrimp?

 

[BigIan]

the copperband butterfly would grow way to large for your tank.
we got a second hand setup marine tank and it was really badly looked after when we got it.
Aptasia every where the guy we got it of said he just used to taker the affected rock out and run it under the hot tap and it killed them. what an idiot! the nitrates were also over 100 ppm.
we injected the bigest specimens with aptaia away. and then got a pair of peppermint shrimp and we now have NO aptasia occasionaly one will creep up here and there but then after a couple of days its gone...

i suggest you do the same, inject the big ones and get some pepermint shrimp.

also when you go to inject the aptasia have everything ready for a water change as we noticed our corals didn`t like the chemicals in the water and all closed up and didn`t look healthy

 

[SkiFletch]

If you cant inject them (they are quick little buggers), you have to just squirt a little of your prefferred killing solution on them very slowly and gently

 

[sothoth]

I'm curious about buying berghia nudibranchs, at a place like berghia.net. Has anyone tried it? I've heard that they're quite effective however they're expensive and they drop dead once the glass anemones are dead, releasing some toxins into the water.

We're using peppermints on my wife's tank now, she went from no glass anemones to about 200 seemingly overnight, so we're in a similar boat as you are.

Good luck, I'll read this closely to see what folks suggest for you. My money is on a combo of peppermints and then using Joe's Juice to kill the larger ones.

 

[SkiFletch]

Berghia Nudibranchs are the best answer for a tank overrun with aiptasia. They're exceptionally tiny organisms 2-10mm long and only eat aiptasia. When they consume all the aips and die, they do NOT release harmful toxins into the water. Other nudi's can do this, but not berghia. Getting a hold of them in the UK is difficult from what I hear, but pretty straight forward here in the states.

 

[sothoth]

Good luck, I'll read this closely to see what folks suggest for you. My money is on a combo of peppermints and then using Joe's Juice to kill the larger ones.

An update: my wife's tank is looking much better now. Two peppermints have eaten ALL the glass anemones we can see, including the BIG ones (bigger than 2" tall) in about 1 week. We're going to pare down to 1 peppermint now, so he can keep the tank maintained. We used no Joe's juice. Gotta love those peppermints!