Oh Noes! Aiptasia Anemone?

[JamesK89]

Hello friends!
 
I'm new to the forum and my experience is mainly with fresh water but a friend of mine recently gave me a basic salt water aquarium and it has a couple of anemones on the live rock.
Once I got the tank home and setup I managed to find one but the other one seems to have disappeared.
 
I fear that it may very well be the dreaded aiptasia anemone and I showed the guy at the LFS and he thinks it might be aiptasia but isn't positive so I was hoping someone here might be able to identify it.
If it is they have some peppermint shrimp that I'll try first as the first line of defense after the tank has had time to settle down before resorting to chemicals that might throw the water chemistry off.
 
I'll try to contact my friend and see if it is something he introduced or if it is something that just appeared as I know aiptasia tends to stow away on live rock.
 

 
Thanks a lot! I really appreciate any help and look forward to participating in the community.

 

[RRaquariums]

First off welcome to TFF
Yes that's aptasia and I'm assuming your friend didn't introduce it since I've never seen any place that sells them more then likely it stowed away on the live rock.
Also if you got one then there's sure to be more that you can't yet see a peppermint shrimp is a good way to go but keep in mind that once the aptasia is gone if you put other corals in the tank you will need to keep the shrimp well fed because they are opportunistic feeders and will eat some other corals.
Anyways that's my two cents I want to say good luck with the new SW set up it's great to have more people joining this forum that are SW and if you need any help the saltwater section is a great place to read up on all of the things you need to know and also a good place to post any questions.

 

[Chad]

To start...great picture! You can actually see the digestive system inside the anemone. Fascinating. 
 
Aiptasia-X is one way to kill aiptasia that doesn't involve putting a new animal in the tank. 
 
That said, peppermint shrimp are a great part of a clean up crew so I like to have a pair even though I haven't had aiptasia in years. 
 
There are two kinds of shrimp sold most often under the common name peppermint shrimp. Lysmata wurdemanni and lysmata californica. L. californica is sub-tropical and will likely die in your tropical tank. They also won't eat the aipstasia.

There are other Lysmata but they don't often show up in the trade based on my experience buying them.

How to tell them apart is in the way the stripes run.

The stripes on L. wurdemanni run as bands then as sort of squiqlies. 

L. californica lacks the stripes and is like the lower part of what we know as the peppermint.

A Lysmata wurdemanni 
B Lysmata rathbunae 
C Lysmata ankeri 
D Lysmata boggessi 
E Lysmata pederseni 
F Lysmata bahia