Aiptasia that doesn’t invade?

[Fishy888]

I have four of these. Three have been in the rock for at least a year now (that’s how long they’ve been with me). Two of the nems split but one of the clones got on a frag plug and stung some zoas. It got dispatched quickly.

My nitrates are sky high (68.5 ppm, coming down though) and my phosphates aren’t the best (0.2 ppm) currently. If this was a run-of-the-mill Aiptasia I’d have anemones all over, and in places I never knew existed.

These pictures were the best I could get due to the angle of the oral disk and the scratches in the acrylic.

This nem is the largest of the four. Its oral disk is half dollar sized.

I thought I stumbled across a post on R2R about certain Aiptasia species not spreading like wildfire. If anyone can possibly identify it for me I’d appreciate it!

I really like the way these guys look. As long as they don’t suddenly start taking over I’m going to leave them. The other three are on the other side of the tank about 4 feet away.

Thank you for your help.

 

[BonnieB]

Wow, I didn’t know there was such a thing as aiptasia that didn’t take over! I’m guessing there’s more here than me wondering how you do it!

 

[Staghorn]

There’s a local fish store near me who will remain unnamed that has an aquarium wall to wall with big aptasia that look like that. At least 500. I don’t know what their secret is(lol) , if you like them keep them, after all your aquarium should be stuff you like. With that being said I would tread lightly and don’t overfeed. I recently beat back allot of aptasia using Berghia and a aptasia eating file fish and it was expensive and stressful. Good luck and enjoy your “glass anemones”

 

[Fishy888]

Wow, I didn’t know there was such a thing as aiptasia that didn’t take over! I’m guessing there’s more here than me wondering how you do it!

I really don’t do anything differently than anyone else. My biggest aiptasia caught a piece of frozen food last night but I certainly don’t go out of my way to feed the Aitasias.

I have RBTAs in my setup too. They pick up the occasional chunk of meat as well but I feed them intentionally once a week. The fish get small bits at a time. Once they stop showing interest the food supply gets cut off. I typically feed the system 4 to 5 times a day.

Even though I have BTAs they have only been with me a couple of months. The Aiptasia anemones have been there since the beginning.

There’s a local fish store near me who will remain unnamed that has an aquarium wall to wall with big aptasia that look like that. At least 500. I don’t know what their secret is(lol) , if you like them keep them, after all your aquarium should be stuff you like. With that being said I would tread lightly and don’t overfeed. I recently beat back allot of aptasia using Berghia and a aptasia eating file fish and it was expensive and stressful. Good luck and enjoy your “glass anemones”

I’ve been watching them closely. My system is a frag tank that holds 120 actual gallons of water. As long as things stay pretty steady state I’m content to leave them. While they’re common as sand grains, this is the first time I’ve had Aiptasia that, for the most part, I can just admire and not be overly concerned; that right there is rare! I do have some Aiptasia-X though just in case. I’m not worried now but I know all too well the perils of Aiptasia. I’ve just never seen this before.

I might get a copper band butterfly fish or a Aiptasia eating filefish but they’re more miss than hit as I understand it, especially in a heavily fed system such as mine.

I’m running a fuge full of Caulerpa racemosa and Chaeto. I trimmed it way back and it’s grown quite a bit now. I have several smaller Chaeto balls but if I added them all together into one ball it would be halfway between softball and basketball sized.

 

[mcarroll]

Might deserve to have their own tank! My (now closed) LFS had a really nice looking single Aiptasia in a 1/2 gallon pico right by the front door. The oral disc was probably the size of a 50¢ piece at maximum.