Matted Filefish or Copperband Butterfly?

[Spyd]

I had great success with my CBB. It ate like crazy! But, the LFS here gets them eating before you purchase them... Novel idea!! I watched it pig out on mysis before I bought it. It took care of the few aiptasia heads that were tucked in with my zoas from my old system. The only problem with the CBB was that it also liked SPS!! It liked to pick the flesh right off of some of my nicest corals. I ended up having to sell it for that reason alone.

I would go with Berghia Nudibranches. Yes, they are a little pricey but they are completely reef safe and only eat aiptasia. They are the safest bet to rid your tank of aiptasia. Once it is all most gone, then sell some off and get our money back. They are a very easy sell!!

[asylumdown]

FWIW I spent over a grand on berghia trying to fix Aiptasia in my 90 gallon, which was so over-run by the time I broke it down you literally couldn't see the rocks any more (10,000 plus anemones). They never made a dent, I think I only ever saw one anemone completely vanish. This was over the course of 7 months.

I had assumed it was because the peppermine shrimp I bought as a first attempt to deal with the problem were eating the nudibranch's and their eggs instead, and I also had a couple of wrasses that could have picked them off. Now that I'm in the process of developing a similar problem in a much larger tank, I bought 20 berghia from Salty Underground (was around 400 with shipping). This time I have no shrimp, and the tank has no fish in it at the moment, so I thought that it would be different.

I know I'm being impatient here, but the nudibranch's went in 7 days ago, and I haven't seen a single aiptasia disappear. Not one. In fact, I think they've multiplied. The closest I came to seeing one at work was a few days ago when one of my larger aiptasias (many times the size of a nudibranch) suddenly exploded those strands of white stinging cells and deflated for no reason. The angle was bad so I couldn't see if there was a nudibranch at it's base in the rock. 6 hours later though, the anemone was completely recovered. Berghia are great in theory, but to solve a moderate aiptasia problem I think you need about three times what most people are willing to pay for them. On top of that, gettting them to breed in a reef tank is extremely difficult, as just about everything that lives on live rock will eat their eggs, and, at least according to salty underground, only some of the larvae that hatch are benthic, fully formed nudibranchs, they can also hatch pelagic larvae that will get sucked up by your overflow and skimmed out. Unless your tank is free of absolutely anything that will eat them, and you can somehow get them to breed in your tank, they're an expensive gamble.

I'm desperately hoping that in a couple of weeks I'll be able to re-post and say 'never mind, aiptasia problem solved', but they didn't work on the last tank, and if they don't work on this tank, with nothing but hermit crabs to possibly predate them, I'm going to put them firmly in the 'not worth the money' category.

[ponokareefer]

So after nothing was happening with my filefish, my brother let me borrow his copperband. 2 weeks later, the aiptasia is gone. I didn't see either fish eat it, so can't confirm for sure it was the CBB.

[subman]

I added 3 peppermints to my 225 not expecting much and have yet to see them since introducing them but the aiptaisa are disappearing so I guess they are working.
I love cbb's but don't trust them with clams.