Aiptasia battle

[roberts01]

So half a year back i saw one huge aiptasia, intrested it with kalkpaste then there were few more, treated with joyes juice and then a few more, aiptasia x and had a heavy outbreak of aiptasia.

Initially i bought 3 peppermint shrimp, did not do anything.

Bought a marginalis chelmon, but overfed it with blackworms 2x a day and a mussel everyday.

Bought a filefish - he ate all the small ones but doesnt touch the big ones on the rocks, although sand is almost aiptasia free.

Bought 9 pepps putt them in qt and sucked sand out of dt with aiptasia, in qt they ate all the aiptasia, but since putting them in tank they dont eat them, that was 7days aggo. Maybe still adjusting.

I think i tried everything.

Any opinion on what to do? Should i try feeding once a day so the chelmon and filefish start eating aiptasia?

One thing that helped is diy majano wand but for now i dont have time to fight them. And want to gain controll more naturally.

 

[laverda]

I seldom see my file fish eat aptasia but thy cleaned them out of my 300 display. When I put some new ones in the tank for them, they go right after them. I never see peppermint shrimp actually eat them, but they slowly disappear in the tanks a put them in. Both take a little time but after a week or so I always notice less and less in the tanks.

 

[roberts01]

Ok i will try to be patience. Its just a bit frustrating - 12 peppermint shrimp, filefish and chelmon and still the faiptasia.

 

[smileyjed01]

i had the same problem, i'd inject lemon juice in the suckers and they would just multiply as i killed them.they ended up taking over all the free rock space. I bought some Berghia Nudis and they wiped them out. i just upped the water changes when i noticed all the aiptasia were gone cause im sure the berghia ended up dying off as well.

 

[reefwiser]

peppermints will eat aiptasia especially if that is all they have available to eat. Starvation is a powerful thing.:)
One trick I learned recently was a magic eraser will fully pull an aiptasia off a glass surface. So if I see one on glass I pull out the magic eraser and vola swipe that sucker right off the glass.:)

 

[WVNed]

https://reeftown.com/

 

[FishyDP]

https://reeftown.com/

Yes...this worked for me very well. I put 6x berghia nudibranches in my tank and they desimated my aiptasia problem in no time. I dropped them a couple inches from one of my largest aiptasias and they were going to town on it within 10 minutes. They are not cheap, but well worth it. Just make sure you dont have any fish/critters that will feed on the nudibranches.

 

[WVNed]

I have had dozens of peppermints, 2 file fish and bombed them with everything I could find.

Mine are gone after I added 10 medium nudibranches about 2 months ago.