What option is best for ridding aiptasia from tank?

[daniella3d]

Ok but what about the pods and other liveform that are benificial? as well as the good bacterias?

Originally Posted by HL649

When I use Aptasia-X I cover most of the aptasia with the solution. In about 1/2 hour the aptasia has mostly melted away. It definitely does not come back. On some of the bigger ones I don't get enough on them and have to come back and treat them again.

My new tank that I am setting up is going to have sterilized rock. There is not going to be any aptasia in it!

[reefwars]

Originally Posted by daniella3d

Ok but what about the pods and other liveform that are benificial? as well as the good bacterias?

thats always my concern too, im weary about adding store bought solutions to my tank on such a large basis, 1 head or half a dozen then fine......300 and thats alot of aiptasia x or lemon juice or kalk or anything to be adding to my system of just 33 g

[kien]

The best method in my opinion is to smother the SOB. Works great with a lot of hitchikers. Smother them with epoxy. I recently layed down a mat of epoxy 5"x3" to smother some Xenia and GSP that got out of control. Works with mushrooms too! LOL. In some cases you may have to irritate them first so that they deflate. Or in the case of Xenia and mushrooms, scrape their heads off. Then, spread out a sheet of epoxy to the affected area. If any managed to peek through just repeat. After a few weeks I'll maybe take off the epoxy if it is unsightly. The area underneath is remarkably clean

Aiptasia in particular I have found quite easy to remove with this approach. A little ball of epoxy, smother over aiptasia, done.

Anyway, yes Doug, this is why I buy so much freaking epoxy

[soapy]

Sometimes if the aiptasia does not have its foot buried in a hole you can suck them out with a turkey baster. I got lots this way. Just be careful not to break them up, they reproduce from the little pieces.

[Aquattro]

I've used all the methods mentioned, and from now on, I'll only use a matted filefish. One little guy cleaned my tank of plague proportions in less than 3 weeks. And the odd one that pops back up gets eaten pretty quickly. Once they're all gone, he ate mysis, so not a critter that will starve after the pests are gone.

[asylumdown]

I've been fighting the war with aiptasia in my 90 gallon for about a year. I was brand new to the hobby when I started this tank and was actually excited (lord what an idiot I was) when these 'cool' little anemones started popping out of one of the rocks I bought. Once I learned what they were, I tried aiptasia-X on the biggest of them, but they were on a base piece of rock at an awkward angle so I couldn't get them completely.

Apparently, my botched attempts to remove them triggered a mass reproduction, and over the course of months, thousands (I do mean thousands) started popping up everywhere. On the glass, on the overflow, on every single rock, under corals, in the sump. They spread so far and so fast I couldn't get all of them.

I've tried: Lemon juice, aiptasia-X, joes juice, berghia nudibranchs (probably 700 bucks worth), peppermint shrimp and finally when I took all my rock out to catch two expensive wrasses that were fighting this week, I bought a propane torch and cooked as many as I could find. The smell was disgusting, but oh so satisfying. I tried a lighter, but a normal lighter doesn't get hot enough fast enough to really work

If you miss even a small piece of the foot, they can come back. I've blasted some with lemon juice (injecting with a small gauge syringe) and watched it melt over a couple of days, only to find 3 nearly microscopic versions growing around the perimeter of where the parent had been a week later.

I find a combination of lemon juice injected right in to the mouth or body works, but it works better if you carefully squirt lemon juice al over the tentacles as a second step as well. In close proximity the acidity seems to be able to denature their proteins before it dilutes too much. I usually then smother the collapsed aiptasia with kalk paste to really seal in the death.

The key is getting them before they spread, so if you're going to blast them, try and take the rock out to do it. When they're disturbed they can launch millions of cells in to the water to start clones on all your other rock, and the super tiny ones are too small to inject with anything, so you have to cover them with kalk paste (which kills everything else under it as well). If I had a time machine I would go back and take that one piece of rock out and boil it, even though it would have meant taking my tank apart.

Because of aiptasia I'm building the entire reef structure of the 320 gallon tank I'm building in my new house out of dry eco rock, and only putting in a couple pieces of new, religiously quarantined live rock to seed coralline algae.

I never thought I could hate an animal as much as I hate aiptasia.

[daniella3d]

wow, that's scary. Now I am scared I will never get rid of mine.

Originally Posted by asylumdown

Apparently, my botched attempts to remove them triggered a mass reproduction, and over the course of months, thousands (I do mean thousands) started popping up everywhere. On the glass, on the overflow, on every single rock, under corals, in the sump. They spread so far and so fast I couldn't get all of them.

I never thought I could hate an animal as much as I hate aiptasia.