Over run with Aptasia

[Trace]

Hi everybody,

I just became a member, as I came across this site, and I already need help with my first 10 gallon nano. I have just started my first saltwater tank, and decided to go with a 10 gallon... well I came home with a bunch of live rock covered with feather dusters. Looking into my tank I noticed that there was some Aptasia (I think thats how you spell it) in my tank. It's covering a bunch of my rock. Well my question is, How do i get ride of this annoying thing?

Thanks for the Help...

              Trace

[Daniel]

peperment shrimp :3d:

[Brentrick]

when i get those i inject them with boiling water. some people say that doesnt work but my trick is to hit them with it about 3 or 4 times

[JarJarBlinks]

I have some, my plan is to inject as much boiling water as I can using a diabetes needle+syringe.

[Daniel]

did the peperment shrimp help or get ride of the problem?

[NanoReefer53]

I never really understood, what's the problem with aipsta ?

[joh]

I think spell is Aiptasia. Anyway, every web talks about it bad way and that sort of scared new reefer out of them (and I think I am one of those too). I think I may have them as well, but not quite sure, now they are very very small and look sort of like tupe worms (like small feather dusters with sort of red-brown color). For now I just wait and read around if what i have actually aiptasia or tube worms. I have pepermint, but doesn't look like she (or he) eat them at all.

[appstateguy]

the small red-brown feather dusters are just that, small red-brown featherdusters... no worries

[joh]

hehehe :-) they are too small so I can't really tell what are they.  hopefully my eyes was right, small featherdusters.

[jeffsz28]

they grow like wild fire -bc i use to grow them in my one tank with nothing else. as long as u have other corals and stuff that are pretty aggressive u shouldn't have a problem controling them

[printerdown01]

The problem with aiptasia is that they will sting your corals... pepermints work VERY well, so long as you get the right species! 'Rhynchocinetes uritai' if that helps, LOL. I can't tell which is which, just buy and pray! Seriously though, I have used them twice, and they worked very well both times!  

 

Figure that I should share my story as an example (hope it helps you guys!!):     The first time I purchased two of the little buggers just to make sure that they did their job (I wanted them in and out!). In three days the entire tank was clean!! It was a mirical, I was soooo excited that I took the shrimps back the very next day... big mistake... the aiptasia grew back!  This is because aiptasia have a knack for regenerating from the smallest bit of left over tissue (they can come back with the boiling method and the kalc method as well!). I just purchased another pep. and he didn't touch the stuff for 4 days, and then last night he ate ALL of the aiptasia in my tank in a single night (along with a small baby shroom ). It was worth it though just to get rid of the aiptasia.  I'm going to keep the little shrimp for a bit longer this time, so long as he doesn't pose any problems... I am afraid that he will develop a fancy for shrooms and that I'm going to wake up one morning to find that ALL my shrooms are gone !!  If you don't have anything in your tank get rid of the aiptasia NOW, don't wait!!!  And please spread the word to all your friends to avoid this evil little creature... good luck!! email me if you have any questions (printerdown01@hotmail.com)...

[Dave ESPI]

I have a nightmare of a tank filled with the lill fU#*&s and I have found they will sting a lot of things, but I have found they are nice too because they eat a lot of drifting debris. However... TOO MANY is a problem. I had a Marine betta that would peg the Popermints occasionaly, so I got SCATS. Orange shoulder and Green chromid Scats  thich trans lates to Sh%$t eater.  SCATOPHAGUS ARGUS.  They seem to like eating aiptasias. Also Racoon and Copperband butterflies will eat them... BUT beware as they might like other things too. I have also used a syringe filled with kalkwasser and burnt the heads and tenticles off and got these lill nudibranchs called BERGHIA from  Htp://www.captivebredcorals.com  they are expensive (15.00 a pop) and small, but will eat the aiptasia. The aip tasia can ALSO eat them, so the burn and slash method is recomened first. good luck. !  

:chainsaw:

[reefguru21]

When the Copperband Butterfly fish went out to lunch he ordered all the aptasia in my tank =)

These are the best natural way to get rid of your aptasia problems they seem to just love the little buggers.

[mysk]

peppermint shrimp work the best imo

[Goofnut]

'Rhynchocinetes uritai', the "Camel Shrimp" (sometimes mistakenly referred to as the "Peppermint Shrimp") eats Aiptasia, but can also bother your corals as well. The true "Peppermint Shrimp" Lysmata Wurdemanni, eats Aiptasia and should leave your corals alone I have one large Aiptasia at the moment and am just going to leave it be until it becomes a problem. I currently only have a small yellow polyp colony, and he seems to be leaving them alone for the time being. If it starts reproducing, I'll get some Peppermints. From what I've read, it is recommended that you get 2 or 3 for a 10 gal tank. Good luck!

 

http://www.marinedepotlive.com/inverts-shrimp.html

[ijeh99]

I know that one does not put camelback shrimp in a reef scenario as they love it.

There are a couple sites you can look into like with some suggestions. Good luck!

http://www.thekrib.com/Marine/aptasia.html

http://www.reefsource.com/aptasia1.htm

http://ozreef.org/press/1997/april.html

[neumahrs]

there is a product called aiptasia stop that has worked well for a lot of people. I believe it is a pepper based product. I still would go with lots and lots of peppermint shrimp.

another solution would be boiling water or inject supersaturated kalk water on them. But this is not a good method for small tanks.

[Cam barr]

i use a method called the cam method i inject them whith calcium works great get rid of them in a day and besides the calcium u should have and it wont hurt the tank

cam

[gobies]

I have both aiptasia and tube/fan worms, and wasn't certain at first how to tell if the aiptasia really were aiptasia. A friend said it best: they look sort of like fan worms, but the fan worms are cuter. The fan worms are fuzzy and have opaque tubes; the aiptasia are smooth and have transparent red-brown tubes.

 

An example of why they're bad: I had one growing on my star polyppy rock. The top of the aiptasia was about the size of a dime. The area of polyps that wouldn't open was about the size of a quarter! I took the polyppy rock out of the water and all the polyps hid. Then I took a toothbrush to the aiptasia. I put the rock back into the tank. A day later, all the aiptasia-affected areas were opening again.

 

How to tell the difference between the camel shrimp and the true peppermint shrimp: the camel shrimp has a "hump" on its back, i.e., part of its back is higher than the rest of it. The true peppermint shrimp doesn't have this hump-back. From what I've read, the camel shrimp will sometimes-but-not-always eat aiptasia, and the true peppermint shrimp will almost-always eat aiptasia.

[NaNO ReeFiN]

Go with the peppermints, they'll take care of the problem. (Others have mentioned that their peps have eaten their polyps as well but I've had two peppermints in the past and never had a problem with them.)