Beating Valonia X Aiptasia

Wasabiroot · Oct 8, 2021

I have been manually removing small colonies of Valonia. They have a bad habit of growing on the frag plugs of my zoas. I also have a small aiptasia outbreak (nothing serious) but want to nip it in the bud before it gets bad.
I have a clam so I am hesitant to add an emerald crab as I hear they are hit and miss and I'm not willing to risk the clam's health. My thought for the aiptasia was berghia nudibranchs, which I understand take weeks to do their work. I want to avoid chemical treatment as my refugium is exploding with life right now. Any thoughts for a good two pronged approach to tackle both and protect the clam?

lapin · Oct 8, 2021

Berghia unless you have a wrasse.
Yellow tang for the bubble.

Wasabiroot · Oct 8, 2021

The tank is a 50g cube so I'm hesitant to add the tang, in addition to the cost. But thank you for the suggestions

TriggersAmuck · Oct 8, 2021

I purchased 3 Berghias from Reeftown.com for my 20 gallon Waterbox which had become infested with Aptasia. About a month later the nudibranch population exploded (I noticed them all over the place at night by chance) at which point the Aptasia disappeared completely over the space of two days. Moved just one of them to my 7.5 gallon cube, and it made fast work of the couple of small pests there. I feel bad that they eventually starve, but this method definitely works!

Ancient Mariner · Oct 8, 2021

I manually remove bubble algae on a regular basis (about 1-2X a week). Initially it felt futile but as the tank is maturing it is controlled but still needs regular removal. I have a yellow and blue tang who basically ignore the stuff. I refuse to use any type of additive for nuisance algae control.

I've used Berghias in a past iteration of my tank and they are amazing. I reused half of those previously infested rock in my current reef and a handful of Aiptasia have popped up (20-30?). I ignore them right now as they seem to not be propagating very fast (observing them for 1 year) and they are not bothering my coral. I will use Berghias again if needed for aesthetics only.

With valonia regular harvesting is just part of my maintenance routine and with a maturing low nutrient tank I think it has become manageable. Trying to get rid of it 100% is very difficult if not impossible. I just look at it as a regular maintenance issue.

With Aiptasia, they don't harm my coral and to me they are just an aesthetics issue. Again in a low nutrient maturing tank they are not multiplying very quickly and I can live with them at this point. But use Berghia if you need to!

Wasabiroot · Oct 8, 2021

I kind of agree re: aesthetics. They currently are really only concentrated in two spots (at the back of the rockwork and at the very top) and honestly if it weren't for the potential for them to spread everywhere, I'd be fine with them. They haven't spread rapidly yet as my tank is 7 mo old and I only just started 2 part dosing. I did some manual removal of the bubble algae today. I was leaning toward Berghia anyway tbh. It looks as though there's an option to purchase a single larger Berghia specimen which I may try out rather than getting a larger group. I'd estimate I have 10 polyps of aiptasia.

Wasabiroot · Oct 8, 2021

Ancient Mariner said:
I manually remove bubble algae on a regular basis (about 1-2X a week). Initially it felt futile but as the tank is maturing it is controlled but still needs regular removal. I have a yellow and blue tang who basically ignore the stuff. I refuse to use any type of additive for nuisance algae control.

I've used Berghias in a past iteration of my tank and they are amazing. I reused half of those previously infested rock in my current reef and a handful of Aiptasia have popped up (20-30?). I ignore them right now as they seem to not be propagating very fast (observing them for 1 year) and they are not bothering my coral. I will use Berghias again if needed for aesthetics only.

With valonia regular harvesting is just part of my maintenance routine and with a maturing low nutrient tank I think it has become manageable. Trying to get rid of it 100% is very difficult if not impossible. I just look at it as a regular maintenance issue.

With Aiptasia, they don't harm my coral and to me they are just an aesthetics issue. Again in a low nutrient maturing tank they are not multiplying very quickly and I can live with them at this point. But use Berghia if you need to!

Speaking of which, beautiful tank. Lots of yellow hues which are imo under appreciated.