Thread: Aiptasia sucks
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Old 11-14-2013, 02:40 AM
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The only problem with peppermints is that if they don't eat the aiptasia, there is a good chance they'll eat the nudibranch's you buy next.

My first tank was so over-run with aiptasia it's one of the reasons that I shut it down. I bought 6 peppermints that I watched devour an aiptasia at the store, then they went in to my tank and promptly disappeared. They never touched a single nem in the display, likely because the tank got fed too much else that they'd rather eat and I never even saw one again until I broke down the tank. I added the nudis second, and they failed too.

Got aiptasia in this current tank and went straight to the nudis once there were enough aiptasia to justify the purchase. It took a couple of months for the nudi's population to reach critical mass, but once it did entire rocks were being cleared of anemones over night. After all the aiptasia were gone, I ended up catching and selling 4 times as many nudibranchs as I had originally purchased, and made my money back and then some. The only major difference between the two experiences was that peppermints were in the tank when nudis failed, and weren't when nudis succeeded. If it were me, I'd try the nudis first and give them a solid 2-3 months to do their thing, as you likely won't see a single nudi, or notice any aitpasia disappearing for at least a month and a half. If that doesn't work, then I'd go to the shrimp. Nudi's have a higher upfront cost, but in the absence of predators have a higher likelihood of success, and you can sell them when you don't need them anymore.

But +1 to joe's juice or any other injectable being an utter and total waste of time and money. If you're lucky, you'll get a complete kill on one out of 20 anemones, but for the most part a few cells of each nem that you inject will survive, each developing in to an individual. Injecting them is the fastest way to make your aiptasia problem worse IMO.
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