What's your experience with Aiptasia KILLERS?

[choss]

I have had a major outbreak in two smaller tanks (20 L and 40 Cube) - Aiptasia X only made them multiply. I added a file fish to the 20 Long first but he went after acans so he was banished to the 40 cube. In went the Berghias. It took some time but the nudis cleaned the 20 L and I have never had an aiptasia come back. Now I kind of ignored the file fish for some time as my cube was so over run with aiptasia that it was being neglected. The front glass was covered in film algae and one day I cleaned the glass and every single aiptasia was gone. The file fish got every single last one. There were hundreds if not 1,000.

 

[Hangman]

Aiptasia anemones are a pest to the nth degree! They almost seemingly appear from nowhere and seem to breed in epic proportions. They are a pain to say the least. So in order to be a good steward of our reef aquarium it is up to us to "eliminate" them. But there are so many different ways that claim to get this job done and knowing what works and what doesn't work can be a challenge. There are aiptasia killing wands, aiptasia killing nudis, aiptasia killing juice, aiptasia killing fish and so on and so forth. So today I would like to ask you about your experience with Aiptasia killers!

1. What has been the BEST and most effective "tool" that you have used to get rid of aiptasia in your aquarium?

2. What are all the ways that have worked and have not worked?

berghia nudis eating aiptasia from this zoanthid colony: image via www.saltyunderground.com

Just bought a bottle of F aiptasia this morning

 

[Reeferbadness]

I tried peppermint shrimp with no results and then bought some F Aiptasia - amazing stuff. Zapped them in one go. Probably not well suited for tank wide outbreaks but very good for isolated battles

 

[Sleeping Giant]

The best and most effective tool is Berghia Nudibranchs

 

[Joe Tony]

I see one, I get peppermint shrimp. Anemone goes away.

I never liked using chemical killers. Au-naturale

 

[Sharkbait19]

I used to have none, until a rock came in from liveaquaria with a bunch of hitchhikers—one of which is an aiptasia. I tried a peppermint shrimp once, but I have always had bad luck with shrimp. I also really want a filefish but don’t know how safe it will be for the reef.

As far as the nudibranch goes I really would want something that would last, and wouldn’t die when the aiptasia runs out....

 

[Treefer32]

I had massive amounts of aiptasia and now can't find a single one. It took about 2 months but the copperband butterfly fish I got devoured them like potato chips! And now he's by far my favorite and most friendly fish! I'm not kidding about how much aiptasia I had. . . Pics below to prove it! I can't find a single one now and I can actually see my rocks now. 90% of the Cyano is gone now too.

 

[Tmrvstyle]

For those that have tried Peppermint shrimp and had both success and no success, FYI to this little helpful thing.

I screenshot this somewhere along the way inside of a R2F forum. I don't know who posted it (didn't capture that in my screenshot) otherwise I would be happy to give credit.

I've heard some are better than others any idea below which is which?

 

[PHSoccer]

When my tank sprung a leak and I had to transfer all my fish and corals to my LFS and my 1995ish live rock went into a garbage can with an air stone, heater, and single LED light while waiting for my new custom built tank. When I put the live rock into the new tank for recycling, every rock was covered in Aiptasia so that the rocks looked almost white. So, I purchased 1 filefish and did not feed him for a month. After he was finished with all the Aiptasia, I brought in my other fish and the filefish has been happy to eat whatever everyone else eats since then. I occasionally see an Aiptasia, but they seem to disappear soon afterwards, so maybe he is doing his job. I have a few in my sump, but I'm ok with them there. If I do need to get rid of one, I'll use F-Aiptasia since that is what I use to control my GSP.

 

[MattW33]

I introduced them on some chaeto, started popping up in the display. Used aptasiaX for a year but my tank is only viewable from one side and getting all of them in a 500 L is challenging. Eventually I settled on getting a marginalis butterfly as I like them anyway. It's been in 6 months and has knocked the aips back. I can see the odd one in hard to reach places. So far no collateral coral damage...

 

[Jack Ravensbergen]

Is that a Favia? I have one small frag that i had for like two months and it's not doing well. What PAR do you keep yours? I have mine in about 200 PAR (sorry i don't want to derail the thread but your coral looks really nice!)

No problem , the favia is on the bottom .
They don't need a lot of light.

 

[bigdrew]

I've heard some are better than others any idea below which is which?

Yup, not sure if you opened the attachment, but it says you want shrimp “A.” The bigger challenge is probably figuring out if the LFS actually knows if they have shrimp “A” or some other shrimp in their tank. If you search R2R, I’m sure that forum I stumbled on will pop up somewhere and proper credit can be given, as well as more detail. There was some explanation above the picture that I had to cut off to get the screenshot.

 

[divetoday]

I have tried everything: peppermint shrimp, nudis, filefish and CBB. Unfortunately, my Melanarus wrasse keeps eating the first two, my filefish is inordinately fond of Mysis and ignores the aiptasia, and I've never gotten a CBB past the first month. Living with Aiptaisia is my new thought.

 

[nano reef]

I had a few come in on a big batch of coral and now I have about 10 that I can see and one is huge! I have been able to kill some on the sandbed but those little bugers hide when you try to get them, so would pepermint shrimp or nudi's be able to eat them if they retract into the rock when they get near them? Not sure what to try. I have 1 36 gallon, so far its just been manualy but so many I cant get at in the rocks. How mnat shrips or nudis should I get for that size tank and want to make sure I get the right kind. I also have a hawkfish that may eat he shrimp before the shrimp eat the aptaisia!

 

[bar|none]

I was keeping them at bay with Aptasia-X for awhile but then went away on vacation for a month and came back to total infestation. Finally bit the bullet and got some Berghias. For more than a month nothing seemed to happen and I didn't see them anymore so thought it was a fail. This week I noticed a Berghia army come out after dusk and they are so far slaying them. Time will tell. It's almost like they hid until big enough and strong enough to come out of hiding. I also reduced my flow at night to help them.

I heard Peppermint shrimp eat Berghias, so no Peppermints for me. Berghias are not cheap.

 

[ElectricMusic]

Nothing works other than a complete teardown and restart. After restart, I made sure I had many peppermint shrimp already in the tank...

 

[BigAsh]

My experience is similar to divetoday's. My Matted Filefish didn't seem to do much and they are known to be hit or miss. I have a six line wrasse that probably ate the nudis I wasted money on (although I believe that nudis are the best treatment if they live). My CBB didn't make it out of QT. Right now I'm relying on 10 Peppermint Shrimp I added plus Aiptasia X treatment during regular maintenance (every two weeks). This seems to be controlling the Aiptasia. I typically only find a few to treat with the Aiptasia X. I think the key to Aiptasia X is to get them while they are wide open and let it sit there for a while (20 minutes or so) before turning flow back on (like the instructions say). I'm also experimenting with Aiptasia X to control the spread of Zenia's which also become a nuisance. Lessons learned: No softies or LPS on rocks; no Zenia; no dark green Posillopora; and probably no more Bubble Tip Anemones (sorry clownfish).

 

[GTAReefTank]

I had a massive infestation. Kept using aiptasiaX, worked but they popped up elsewhere. And I had a huge colony in a part of the tank I couldn’t reach.

I ordered the largest aiptasiaX bottle, then walked into my fish store and bought a copperband.
This bad boy cleaned out every single aiptasia in less than 2 weeks.

AiptasiaX bottle remains unused

 

[robinluvsbishies]

So here's my experience with aptasia "killers"

• Berghia Nudi's - successful
  • Need to give them enough time (weeks) and it'll start out looking like nothing is happening and all of a sudden you start noticing less and less aptasia (assuming you have no predators that will eat them)
• Filefish - successful with warning
  • I still have the filefish I picked up to see if they worked, he's a great little fish, but once he's out of aptasia to eat, he went to work on palys, which was fine for me because they were starting to take over the tank. I've heard of them going after blastos and zoa's as well, but I haven't had that issue with mine
• Aptasia X - limited success........maybe
  • It seemed to work, but I ended up with more aptasia than I started with after using it for a while (and me thinking I eradicated them

That's all I've tried, but these are my experiences.

Lucky I bought 25 nudists and nada 50x more aptasia haven't seen any since I put them in 5 weeks ago

 

[Proteus Meep]

1. What has been the BEST and most effective "tool" that you have used to get rid of aiptasia in your aquarium?

Best and only fully successful "tool" I cry havoc let slip the Berghia of War

2. What are all the ways that have worked and have not worked

Aiptasia X....i have used it to kill larger ones to allow the Berghia to devour the lesser minions without fear of being accidentally consumed themselves by the larger aiptasia....but.... there are a couple of Berghia breeders here in England that actually use aiptasia X to annoy their aiptasia into Spawning to keep their Berghia fed and one I was speaking with joked the X in aiptasia X stands for multiply

Puttied over some in the past with about a 50% success rate the holes in the very porous live rock we used to get allowed them to back off and emerge elsewhere but with today's near non porous rocks it may be near 100% success as they have no where to retreat to....after a couple of weeks the putty can just be popped off

Screwdriver to gouge out under them has worked on a few where I could remove the rock from the aquarium and then wash off any aiptasia mush where things got a bit medieval before returning to the tank