Aiptasia going to be the end of me

[Notsolostfish]

Peppermint shrimps will work. Be sure to get the right kind.

Wouldnt my red line wrasse eat them?

Tank raised real peppermints from algae barn.

I bought 6 for my 130g tank. Killed all the big aptasia with kalk paste. Over the next 3 months the rest slowly disappeared.

The shrimp are huge now. I feed the tank well they’ve never bother any other corals for the 9 months I’ve had them.

I was at my wits end after trying a dozen different solutions. Peppermints worked wonders. Just make sure you get tank raised true peppermints.

would tm wrasse eat them

 

[MarsReefer]

Wouldnt my red line wrasse eat them?

would tm wrasse eat them

My fairy wrasses never bothered them. I added them after lights out to give them a chance to hide. Now they are like 2” long and too big for any of my fish to bother them.

 

[Lbrdsoxfan]

peppermint worked for u? got a red line not sure

Halichoeres wrasses IME was a no go. I have a H. Melanurus and a H. Claudia, they harassed the peppermints but the red Coris was outright hostile to the shrimp & berghia. Like where I dropped the berghia lights out, the Corus hovered and picked @ the rock. Thus 75$ x2 was gone.

 

[Dominic Sakon]

My tank is 4 months old. lPS dominant tank. I have aiptasia going on killing me. I cant even keep up with F aiptasia. I have a red like wrass. Trried to pur a nudi in the display, and he immediately picked on it, ate it. Any idea how to control the aiptasia? Im tired of F aiptasia. I see them pop up here and there every few weeks. What to try here?

I've used distilled white vinegar with a needled syringe and it melts them almost instantly with like 0.2 mL then I scrape them off the rock entirely and scoop out the left over goop. I only ever use like 1-3mL of vinegar in my >100 gallon system though then I switched to F-aptasia. Just keep F-aptasiaing them.. Like any issue in reefing if it takes a long time to get bad, expect it to take the same amount of time to get better. I love F-aptasia you just HAVE to make sure you bury them and let it sit with zero flow for at least 30 mins until it hardens. I hunted for them at night with a flashlight bc its often easier to see their ugly a** tenticles sticking up that way. Good luck man, stay with it and take out 5-10 a day and eventually they will all be gone besides maybe the occasionally one here or there and when you see that one take care of it don't let it go or you'll end up right back where you're at now.

 

[areefer01]

My tank is 4 months old. lPS dominant tank. I have aiptasia going on killing me. I cant even keep up with F aiptasia. I have a red like wrass. Trried to pur a nudi in the display, and he immediately picked on it, ate it. Any idea how to control the aiptasia? Im tired of F aiptasia. I see them pop up here and there every few weeks. What to try here?

Biota Matted Filefish. If you don't have a wrasse or peppermint shrimp you can try the berghia.

 

[jhadaway]

peppermint worked for u? got a red line not sure

I have 3 working on my 100.3 at home now but 1 completely cleaned a 5.5g nano in about 2-3 weeks. I started noticing one or two here and there and then bam, they were all gone. I upgraded to a Fluval Flex 15 and still not a single aiptasia. No real progress at home yet but I'm hopeful. I may take the work pep home. It just started coming out during the day and eats pellets an anything off the floor. The cleaner shrimp chases him sometimes. Solid red for me.

 

[Notsolostfish]

Biota Matted Filefish. If you don't have a wrasse or peppermint shrimp you can try the berghia.

I have a red line wrasse

 

[PaulE61]

My tank is 4 months old. lPS dominant tank. I have aiptasia going on killing me. I cant even keep up with F aiptasia. I have a red like wrass. Trried to pur a nudi in the display, and he immediately picked on it, ate it. Any idea how to control the aiptasia? Im tired of F aiptasia. I see them pop up here and there every few weeks. What to try here?

I Had a massive outbreak in a nano tank tried everything, nudis, shrimp, chemicals nothing worked so I decided to throw in the towel and abandon that tank as I was having no luck with it, so I started a new build.
I was anxious about aiptasia getting into my new build so I had the idea of getting a filefish putting it in the infested tank and not feeding it, so he had nothing to eat but aiptasia, he was in there about 10 weeks he never cleared the pest but didn't die either, so I assume he was living off them, fast forward a year he's in the new tank, I had one aiptasia on a frag plug that I removed and not seen any since.
Try training a File fish, they wont win a beauty contest but they're great characters, and change skin pattern from all over drab to a checkerboard pattern!.

 

[NickHolmes]

First tried a copperband then a filefish but immediately started nipping everything except aiptasia. Then got an Australian stripey which cleared the infestation in 2 weeks. Acans and other fleshy LPS might be on the menu at some point but I know the aiptasia will be back in no time so it’s here to stay. Loads of personality

 

[waverider]

my advice to OP having just gone thu this myself where Aiptasia took over my reef on 4 year old Coraline Encrusted Rock. Rock that I could never destroy by boiling or god forbid Bleaching:

You Can Kill them:

1) Make certain your water params are strong and drop nutrients. -Run your Skimmer hard, do water changes. Do everything you can to lower nutrients. Mine were thriving as I had neglected my reef. Nitrates and Phosphates were high. Abundant Algae. -I fixed that first with water changes, raising ALK, CA and MG via dosing. I ran powerheads to blast out the tank with Skimmer on full.

2) Next I began Nuking Aiptasia with Aiptasia-X. Every single polyp I could find. Wait a few days, and Repeat.

3) Once I had killed them back I added 6 Peppermint Shrimp. Make CERTAIN YOU BUY "Lysmata Wurdani" species of Peppermint Shrimp. AND "Starve Them". Be careful about feeding your fish. I had previously blasted my live rock of as much detritus as I could and had my Skimmer suck that out before adding the Shrimp. Then once the Shrimp were in, I was careful to feed my fish sparingly.

Within 4 days the Shrimp were eating the Aiptasia and magically, Aiptasia were dissappearing.

You can do it.

PS. I bought a File Fish also, but I cannot verify he did a thing. I believe that in my case it was a combination of Nuking the Aiptasia with Aiptasia-X combined with LOW FLOW and Peppermint Shrimp "Lysmata Wurdani" that finished the Aiptasia off.

Three weeks in, and I a nearly Aiptasia free. Save litterally 3-4 remaining heads which I nuked tonight.

 

[workhz]

I've also given up. kalk paste and aipatasia x, just couldn't keep up. I got a file fish last week and adding a klein next weekend. We'll see how that goes (in a 90g).

Just to update, not sure who did what but I think the file fish ate the smaller aiptasia and the klein tackled the bigger ones. Tank is 99% free after 2 weeks with the file fish and 1 week with the klein. Mind you, my frogspawn isn't look great so I think one (or both) of them is picking at it too.

What's filefish and klein's safe? I guess once the aiptasia are gone I should feed those 2 with a funnel like this:

 

[Nate Chalk]

Peppermint shrimps

 

[Mykesocalreef]

I just had this scenario. Tried aiptasia x, f aiptasia, joes juice. I’m my instance just made it worse. I’ve done the Berghia nudibranch and it worked but was expensive and took a while. If you get the legit peppermint shrimp they will absolutely wreck aiptasia. I’ve got two tanks plumbed together. Had a nasty outbreak with probably 50-100 in each tank. In two weeks I can only see one in one tank and about twenty in the other. This is with 4 peppermints in each tank. I’m talking so bad my snails were covered in aiptasia.

 

[Cheri Vegas]

My tank is 4 months old. lPS dominant tank. I have aiptasia going on killing me. I cant even keep up with F aiptasia. I have a red like wrass. Trried to pur a nudi in the display, and he immediately picked on it, ate it. Any idea how to control the aiptasia? Im tired of F aiptasia. I see them pop up here and there every few weeks. What to try here?

The nudis do work well. They cleaned up a bad infestation of aptasia in my reef tank. I did have to remove my dottyback the keep the berghia from being an expensive snack. I’m actually breeding some nudis and am looking for aptasia to feed them!

 

[Notsolostfish]

I just had this scenario. Tried aiptasia x, f aiptasia, joes juice. I’m my instance just made it worse. I’ve done the Berghia nudibranch and it worked but was expensive and took a while. If you get the legit peppermint shrimp they will absolutely wreck aiptasia. I’ve got two tanks plumbed together. Had a nasty outbreak with probably 50-100 in each tank. In two weeks I can only see one in one tank and about twenty in the other. This is with 4 peppermints in each tank. I’m talking so bad my snails were covered in aiptasia.

But wouldn’t the peppermint shrimp eat my lps? Also algae barn have some real peppermint shrimp. But like they are tiny worried about my wrasse eating them

 

[Mykesocalreef]

But wouldn’t the peppermint shrimp eat my lps? Also algae barn have some real peppermint shrimp. But like they are tiny worried about my wrasse eating them

I’ve never had them eat anything other than the food for the fish.