Aiptasia problem

[TPhillips011]

I know I tagged along this same post on another thread but wanted to put thi out on it's own thread.

In my 120 gal show reef at the shop, I am having a continual battle with aiptasia. and am thinking of adding 4 peps to the tank to control them. The tank is mainly SPS, mushrooms, Zoanthids and Xenia. I do have some Clavularia, and Briareum (star polyps), Parazoanthus and Clams. I am most worried about the Clavularia, Xenia and Para Zoanthus falling Prey to the peps. I would like to hear more experiences with peps before I do this.

As far as my experiences I have a camel shrimp tanks which will devour any mushroom, aiptasia, leather, polyp or whatever goes in it. I use them to clean aiptasia off my LR when needed.

I also have a peppermint tank which I clean LR with attached corals of any aiptasia problems. So far it seems the Peps only eat Aiptasia. I have put them with Zoanthid polyps, leathers, mushrooms, and Briareum. I also have a Zoanthis tank which kept gtting aiptasia so I through in 4 peps and so far I am only missing aiptasia. On one occasion I left a Zoanthid poly rock in with the peps for 2 weeks and removed it when I saw a peppermint trying to nibble on one polyp. The tank isn't well lit and the polyps weren't doing as well in that tank so maybe it only ate the weak polyp???? I think I am going to put them in my show but wanted to hear evryones thoughts on here first.



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Todd A Phillips

My 120gallon Reef Tank

[Ninong]

Do you ever get in any Copperband Butterflyfish? (Chelmon rostratus) Just put one of those guys in there for a while.

Ninong [img]/ubb/biggrin.gif[/img]

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Irrational Exuberance!

[stingray]

I had some peppermint shrimps a few years back and they did an a1 job at clearing the aiptasia,the only drawback was that they also did an a1 job at clearing my red mushrooms as well,although they never touched any other types of mushroom or polyp.

[TPhillips011]

Thanks for the information.

The funny thing is today I threw a rock with about 13 red mushrooms and 5-6 aiptasia's into my peppermint shrimp tank and they quickly devoured the aiptasias in about 2 hours. Then they cleared off the rocked and didn't mess with the mushrooms at all.

I don't think there will be a definitive answer here, eh.

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Todd A Phillips

My 120gallon Reef Tank

[hcp28]

My LFS has huge Apitsia!!! They are at least 5" in length it's insane, they have it in one of their coral display tanks... it's insane.. I asked her what they do about it, they said usually they scrape them off the glass or pick them off if they are on the frag plugs... but they left the big ones because they look nice. [img]/ubb/eek3.gif[/img]

So what do you do with the huge Apitsia? Is it scalpel and tweezer time? Or maybe blow torch and strategic napalm detonation time? [img]/ubb/biggrin.gif[/img]

Henry

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[naser]

just mix up alittle batch of kalk...dont wait for it to settle.. suck some up and squirt the little suckers. kills them in my tank.

[Invisibleman]

any other methods to manually remove them? like scrape them off with a razor blade?

[Baywatch Babe]

any other methods to manually remove them? like scrape them off with a razor blade?

Don't do that! The spores will be realeased into the water column and soon you will have more aips than before. Boiling water and/or kalk injections worked for me, I did it 3x to make sure that they won't come back.


Gia

[popcorn]

Kalk worked for me... although sticking the little boogers is tough. We have 2 pepps in our 90, and have never bothered any of the polyps that we've noticed, but the camel in the 30 was muching on some awhile back. Once the polyps were moved to the other tank, they grew back.

I will say that the pepps took care of the aiptasia. Well, all except one, but I think they let it grow and just enjoy a light dessert every so often.[img]/ubb/biggrin.gif[/img]

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[Joaco]

http://www.wyx.com/iheo/tank/aiptasia.htm

Joaco

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My webpage Updated 28th February 2001

[TPhillips011]

Joaco

Thanks for the link. VERY INFORMATIVE.

I think I am going to take my chances and see what happens. 4 peps in my 120 shouldn't get out of control anyway.

Thanks everyone for the info.



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Todd A Phillips

My 120gallon Reef Tank

[Doh]

I agree with Ninong, i tryed everything and the copperband was the only thing that did the job[img]/ubb/biggrin.gif[/img]

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[Marshal]

Just my 2 cents worth. 2 peps in my 75 cleared all signs of aptasia and have lost nothing else. Very lightly stocked tank, but the peps have shown no interest in any other coral.

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