Ok great, and I don't mean to hijack the OP's thread, nor do you. My point was and continues to be 'the truth' is interpreted many ways. The truth says for YOU it works or YOU believe in it. For ME I utilized one bhergia as a bit of an experiment. My Aiptasia was gone ( quite a few ) within about 3 or 4 weeks. I no longer have them, that was 6 months ago. Am I willing to say this is the truth or the only way? No. It worked for me. Maybe not for others. I didn't witness my Nudi harming others in the tank. Did I try and find it before it starved out, to sell back to LFS yes I did. I failed there.Well, aiptasia eating nudibranchs tend to starve out before they can finish the job, copperband butterflies don’t consistently work, and aiptasia eating filefish will pick at corals as well. Peppermint shrimps can destroy corals, as well as inconsistently work.
There’s no perfect solution, but I do believe that manual removal is the “best method”. Especially for a smaller tank.
For larger tanks that will be okay with having a few aiptasia’s here and there, you can use the animals to take care of it.
I looked back at my original post and I can’t find the part that caused you to get so defensive. It’s my opinion that manual control is the most effective way at eradicating aiptasia. I don’t understand how this can be interpreted as “expert” opinion.
I think it’s well established that no organism can consistently eradicate aiptasia without starving out themselves nor potentially harming other organisms in the tank.
If saving time but accepting that there will always be aiptasia is your goal, and you accept some corals may get nipped at, by all means go for the predation method.
Be well, happy reefing.
