aiptasia question

[Anonymous]

I've neglected this for far to long, now they are out of cotrol. I took all my fish back to the LFS, so I wouldnt starve them while I'm not feeding the tank. I got 5 peppermints and a smaller copperband. I also soaked 2 of the rocks that were the most infected for 3 or 4 hours in tap water. I figured the chloramine would get them too. The aiptasia that were on those rocks, they looked dead but i did not scrape them off. I kinda hoped the peps would get a taste for the dying ones, then go for the rest. That didnt work, after a few hours they started coming back. Now they are deformed, but alive and regrowing.
How long do these things have to soak in freshwater to kill them?
Can i cut the tops off of the bigger ones with some scissors and net
the top? I imagine they would grow back, but I'm hoping the peps
or cb would eat the base.

 

[jandree22]

The hot kalkwasser method works for me about 50% of my attempts. Just mix up a ton of kalkwasser in a relatively small amount of water. Heat it up so it's near, if not boiling. Then preferably with some type of syringe blast the suckers with the solution. The closer and more direct you can hit them, the better your chances will be.

I once had an experience where my Pep's were ignoring an Aiptasia, then I blasted the bugger and it retracted. 5 min later a Pep was pickin apart what was left over.

 

[fungia]

people say joes juice works but maybe you have too many to do that. you probably need a lot more peppermints, give them some time to do their thing. some people say it takes a long time but once they start they quickly eat it all.

i dont know about tapwater since it will kill other things on the rock too. dont cut them! i tried this a long time ago and it made more aiptasia then i could cut out.

 

[Anonymous]

If you have access to a syringe, and the time to dedicate. Jandree22's method would work more than 50% of the time if you inject the mixture INTO each aptasia. Actual injections.
I belive you can also do this with a hypersaline mixture.

 

[Anonymous]

I've got to many to inject, although I will keep injecting a few a day just to help the critters out. I've got some that are so big, I dont think injecting them does much, just seems to stress them out and they release more buds into the water. Tried kalk paste, lemon juice, stop aiptasia,
boiling ro water.
a lesson to be learned. kill the first one you see, or your tank will soon be infested.

 

[Anonymous]

Sure its Aiptasia and not Mujano?
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Mercedes Benz 770

 

[cdeakle]

Get joe's juice, it works well and kills off both aptaisia and majanos.

Side not though, might be complications using the juice with shrimps. A few people on here including myself have used the juice and have hade unexplained shrimp deathes shortly thereafter. Either way though, it will kill them (aptaisa/majano) with prejudice and work...

 

[Anonymous]

I am fairly certain they are aiptasia. I have been thinking of giving the joe's juice a try, but if there is a chance it will kill shrimp, wouldnt it kill
tube worms, pods, sponges, etc as well?

 

[FranklinP]

FWIW. mine have begun moving about the tank and small white dots have appeared on the glass. These dots sprout into anenomes in about a days time. The experimental rock that I destroyed all the ones I could see have now all come back and are growing fine. It is odd that the ones on the destroyed rock are now on the move. It's like they no what I did last week. They are also moving towards my bedroom wall and the odd phone calls are kinda creepy late at night. The rest is between me and my therapist.

 

[AnotherGoldenTeapot]

I used to have a lot of aptasia in my tank.

I tried kalk, toasting them with a BBQ starter (mini flame thrower), blocking them in their holes with epoxy, and using various products that claimed to control them. None of these methods worked for me.

I added a copperbanded bfly and within a few weeks every visible aptasia was gone.

My tank is now aptasia free. Well that's not quite true, if you look hard enough in places where the bfly can't get to then you might get "lucky".

 

[Mogo]

Try Joes Juice. It's getting raves from aquarists in this area.

 

[ferd]

I recently had a serious outbreak that I fought for about 6-8 months.
Had 2 pepps that didn't show any interest for several months.
Bought a copper band butterfly that didn't show any interest for 2-3 weeks. After 3 weeks he aquired a taste for the little buggers and cleaned out the entire tank. He even ate the big ones after the little ones were gone. He also devoured all my little white tube worms during the first 2 weeks, but I consider that a worthy sacrifice. Haven't seen him mess with any other coral or polyps, but he does knock my snails off the glass all the time. Not sure what is up with that.
Kalk paste only works on the ones you can see/get to, make sure you don't get any on your other corals. All you have to do is let one of them survive and you will be dealing with them again in short order.
I suggest using kalk paste/joe's juice to kill the big ones that you can get to and pepps or CBB to kill the other ones lurking in the cracks and crevices that you can't see.

 

[yakiwb2]

I had close to two hundred of them so I picked up a product called STOP aiptaisia...it killed the big ones but there is always small ones you can't get at. The stop polluted my tank and now I have a huge hair algae problem. I bought three peppermints and they took care of them in about three weeks. Now there isn't one. Patience is key. They'll realize how tasty they are soon!