Aiptasia? Also a red spiky hitchhiker

[TSwift]

It's day 4 that my new 12 gallon nano cube has been cycling and i noticed brown tentacles growing out of a crevice of a rock. I am almost positive it is aiptasia. If so, I guess ill go buy joe's juice. There is also a red thing that looks similar to the aiptasia but it has a stem.

 

Heres a picture. You can see the brown tentacles in the center crevice above the purple stuff and it waves around like it is squishy. The red hitchhiker is lower to the right. I'm sorry if its hard to see, my camera wouldn't focus. I can try to post different pictures later.

 

 

EDIT: Second picture.. different angle.

[scorpkeeper]

Yeppers...Aiptasia for sure. You also have one in the hole on the bottom right of Pic #1.

[josh4107]

+1 for aiptasia. chances are these arent the only ones. i have them and man are they a pain! ive been fighting mine for 2 or 3 years. i use aiptasia x which seems to make them go away for a week or two but they always seem to come back. i would try to get rid of them before u put anything in the tank b/c if left unattended they will spread fast. Good luck my friend!

[TSwift]

Alright, i just found more on a different rock... very small... I'm so sad I guess i'm on the way to the LFS.

One last question though- If it comes back, since i don't have anything else in the tank, should i try taking it out and burning/scraping it off??

[RussianBoy]

Alright, i just found more on a different rock... very small... I'm so sad I guess i'm on the way to the LFS.

One last question though- If it comes back, since i don't have anything else in the tank, should i try taking it out and burning/scraping it off??

oh yeah man, your tank is cycling, and you got no stock in it, take this chance to eradicate it anyway you can before you have stock and corals and other things that limit your options on how you can treat it.

[josh4107]

i agree, you should be happy that you found it when you did. you can basically use any option to get rid of it now since you are cycling and have no livestock. you could even as a last ditc effort boil the rock but that would kill everything on the rock good and bad stuff thats why i say last ditch effort.

[TSwift]

Well i got to the LFS that i trust the most and the guy said he can sell aiptasia X to me for 15 dollars or I can take salt and lift the LR up, poor the salt into the crevices where the aiptasia is and it will turn them to goo. After that I got kind of confused though. I think i wait a while and scoop them out, but maybe i just put the rock back in the tank after a few minutes? Any thoughts? Either way, i went and bought a small bag of oceanic natural sea salt mix. This will also get my salinity up at the same time (its at 1.021 right now) .... so hopefully this works. If not, will go buy the chemicals.

[josh4107]

what do you mean by scooping them out? if you mean taking the rocks out and pouring salt where u see aiptasia then you would want to do this when you do a water change. that way you can take some tank water out put it in a bucket and then after you do the salt treatment on the rocks you can rinse them off in the old water. ive never heard of pouring salt on the rock but i guess if it works with slugs it would work with aiptasia. you could also try burning them with a lighter

[TSwift]

Well I just did the salt treatment and as far as I can tell it worked. I just took the rock to the surface, poured salt on the aiptasia, waited a few minutes, and placed it back in the tank. I tried not to touch the tissue because I did not want to break anything off and have it spread across the tank. In the process, a grey rolly-polly looking bug came out of the rock and went back in. It scared the crap out of me! I hope its good, I'm about to go research it.

 

We will see if it will come back later I suppose. With the addition of the salt, my salinity has thankfully went up from 1.021 to 1.024. If it comes back, I have a ton of back up plans (including chemicals, boiling, burning with a lighter) haha. I will not give up!

[josh4107]

the bug was probably just a copepod which are good! good luck with the aiptasia. i battled with some today actually. squirted em with some aiptasia-x so they will probably be out of sight for a couple of weeks anyway.

[TSwift]

This is what the bug looked like. Guess it was a copepod!! Awesome Hope I didn't accidental kill it!

[spham24]

That's not a copepod. get rid of it. If the aiptasia retreats into a hole, use some superglue gel and seal it up.

[TSwift]

Really? What is it? It didn't look exactly like that, but it was pretty large. Id say a little larger than my fingernail. How exactly do I get rid of it?

[Markushka]

That pic is of an isopod that is parasitic on fish. not good. Try to find pics of amphipods because you could have those and not the isopod. A good way to drive out anything on your rock of that nature is a FW dip. just dunk the rocks and shake them around all those critters will fall out. The FW will kill them tho so its not ideal. I find that a quick shake in FW and then returning them to a container of SW asap only kills 30% (rough estimate) or so.

[TSwift]

Well i think he resembles more of one of the amphipods, thank god. Just incase though, i took one of the rocks and dipped it in fresh water and nothing came out!! I did the same to the surrounding rocks and nothing came out of those either. I'm gonna keep an eye out for it though.

[josh4107]

sorry i said copepod, i meant amphipod my mistake on that one.

[TSwift]

Unfortunantly, i found another colony on a different rock and salted it. I haven't seen any more on the original rock. If i see them come back again I'm going to burn them. This is really discouraging!