I would respectfully disagree on the lemon juice front. Aiptasia can reproduce from a single cell left behind, and it's basically impossible for the lemon juice to kill every cell. What is more likely is that from the bit of tissue that's left over you'll get two or three baby aiptaisa growing where there used to be one. The babies often move before they're big enough for you to notice them, so it might seem like you've killed it when in fact you've just spread the problem around. Not to mention the process often triggers the anemone to release its planaria, and it only works on the aiptasia you can reach with a syringe.
I broke my first tank down because of aiptasia. I tried everything, lemon juice, one of the strong acids, kalk paste, joe's juice, aiptasia X, I tried applying with droppers, injecting with syringes made for diabetics (buying those at shoppers is uncomfortable), taking rocks out and blow torching them, buying zappers that were supposed to fry them with electricity... months and months, hours and hours, and hundreds of dollars later I had so many aiptasia you couldn't see the rocks anymore. We were moving a couple months later but I got so fed up I broke the tank down way before I had to, there was easily 10,000 of them in a 90 gallon tank. Lemon juice will give you a temporary reprieve (I found it worked better than any of the commercially available products), but it won't eliminate them from your system, and the problem will just steadily grow. It's also horribly inefficient, human muscle power is probably the least effective way to try and keep an aquarium pest in check.
So long as you've not got any peppermint shrimps, berghia are almost a guaranteed bet. They're expensive as all get out, but considered against the lifetime cost of a reef tank, they're worth every penny. The only place I know of that commercially sells them with any consistency and ships to Canada is Salty Underground in the states. You'll pay an arm and a leg for shipping, but 20 of them cleared out my 275 in less than 3 months, and the system is now 100% aiptasia free, all without me lifting so much as a finger. I even made money on them selling them off once there were no more aiptasia. I bought 20, and I think I sold around 60. I wish I still had some, I'd give them to you. Apparently there's a couple Canadian sources, one in Ontario and one in BC that you might be able to track down here on Canreef, but Salty Underground is the only place I know that operates an online store with advertised dates of availability.
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04-13-2013, 07:49 PM
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