Aiptasia Problem

[drillsar]

I have been battling this problem for the longest:

I tried Kalk, Drano and nothing seems to work.

So I want to basically redo my tank completely.

I have nothing in this tank now but snails.

Will cooking the rock work? if so how is this done?

I heard I can try to fill a bathtub full of the hottest water and let rock sit there for 3 hours, will that work?

[thebkramer]

Here is a great informative link...he has many posts throughout entire thread on killing aiptasia and cooking LR:
http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1786183&page=3
http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1786183&page=11
http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1786183&page=4

[kzickovich]

How big is the tank? I had a very bad outbreak once and I got lucky using a copperband butterfly within two weeks it was all gone. After they were gone he ate Rods food

[tspors]

How have you used the draino? Are you saying you can't kill it or they are multiplying?

[drillsar]

tank is a JBJ 28g Nano, what is happening is there coming back or coming back more. Draino is killing them but coming back. So will cooking rock cure this?

[tspors]

Are you injecting the draino into the root of the Apst.????

[drillsar]

no I injected it on top of the disc

[tspors]

Does not work that way. You need to get an actual syringe from the pharmacy. Take the needle and stick it in the root then inject. Poof it will NEVER return. Honest. Add some peppermint shrimp they will take care of the small ones, you need to inject the larger ones.

[sruiz]

I've had the best luck with peppermint shrimp but not all will eat aptasia(hit or miss). The last few times I found ONE i pulled the rock out and torched the sucker with a BIC lighter then simply rinsed off and put back in the tank.

[jc-reef]

Since you have no corals in the tank, I would agree with the previous poster on peppermint shrimp. That is what I used when I set up my tank after cycle when I saw a few glass anemone's pop up. I got 10 pepps for my 90g and they cleaned the tank in a day or so. I waited a month or so and fed them seldomly so they kept looking for anything that popped up. I would get them out once your tank is clean since they tend (at least for me) to aquire a taste for LPS like hammer/frogsporn corals, etc.

This way you dont kill the good 'live' stuff in/on the rocks.

I would at least try that 1st.

[drillsar]

How many peppermint shrimps for a 28 gal?

[Jstdv8]

How to kill aiptasia with pickling lime or kalkwasser mix

1.) Mix 1tablespoon and 1/2 teaspoon of Mrs. wages pickling lime with 1 1/2 Teaspoons of water to make a nice paste. The paste should not be running, but it also must be thin enough to get injected through the syringe.
2.) Apply a layer of the paste to the oral disc of the aiptasia. Sometimes you can get them to think its food by teasing their tentacles a little and then injecting the paste onto the oral disc. If they suck back into their hole right away just cover the hole with the paste.
3.) wait 45 minutes to an hour
4.) suck out the paste and the aiptasia with a turkey baster and dispose of them.

I bought 100 lbs. worth of live rock from a fellow reefer who was tearing down her tank. The rock was covered with aiptasia (estimating over 300). Some of the rocks also had some corals on them (mushrooms, green star polyps and Kenya trees)
I put the rock on a 55 gallon tank that I used as a holding area while I treated the rock before putting it into my display tank.
I mixed up a small batch of the lime paste and started injecting the aiptasia with the method used above.
I recommend doing only a few at a time as the paste can cause a PH spike in your tank if you do too much. Keep in mind Pickling lime and kalkwasser are similar products that are used for correcting alkalinity and calcium problems and can be used safely if in small doses.
Be sure to cover the whole face of the aiptasia with the paste to ensure that it cannot release its seed into the tank and make more aiptasia later. You also must get it out of the hole as even a small piece of aiptasia can grow into a whole one over time. Do it right the first time.

Other methods that work include Peppermint shrimp, Copper banded butterfly, joe's juice, aiptasia-x, vinegar, boiling water or just leaving the rock out in the open air for a couple of days(killing everything on it.)

Peppermint shrimp work well as long as they don't have a different food source they like better. It is also very important to get the correct shrimp as there is an imposter shrimp that doesn't feed on aiptasia that looks very similar. When you are buying the shrimp ask for L. wurdemanni. Do Not accept the shrimp if it is a L. californica.
Peppermints will also not attack a large aiptasia so these will have to be removed in another way. There is also no guarantee that the aiptasia will not release its seed into the water which they tend to do when in danger. This will cause more to pop up later.

The Copper banded butterfly's require an established tank to safely house one (preferably 6 months or longer). Some for whatever reason don't prefer aiptasia though (the upside here is that these ones are reef safe)
If you choose this method you risk the fish devouring other corals in your tank that you wanted to keep once it has eaten the aiptasia. And again, there is no guarantee that they won't release their seed into the water when attacked.

Aiptasia X is similar to the paste that I described above and it comes in a nifty little syringe with a straight and an angled head for getting at aiptasia in hard to reach places.
The downside here is the cost. At 20 dollars a tube it gets pretty costly, especially if you have a lot of aiptasia to treat. A jar of Mrs. Wages pickling lime costs about $4 at Wal-mart and you will have a lifetime supply.

Boiling water, vinegar and Joe's juice all have been known to work but as with most methods are very hit and miss. While one person says they had great success the next may say it didn't work at all.

Best of luck to you and good hunting!

[Namnuta]

You should try a matted file fish.

[khmerspec]

pepermints worked for me also, got 3 for my 55g a few years back.
again hit/miss
feed them sparingly wen u first get them, and gradually reduce.

Im against any of the paste stuff, because the second u touch the apt.s with anything, they shoot out seeds and fill ur tank with more.

[Biermann]

Peppermints worked for me also. I originally had 3 in my 125 and they did not touch the apstasia. I ended up getting rid of them and bought 6 more and I have some real killers now. I call them the peppermint mafia since they took out an apstaia so large I figure it had to be a gang hit.

[jc-reef]

How many peppermint shrimps for a 28 gal?

Well, since you stated that you have nothing left in your tank but CUC, you could get 4-6...and then either reduce the population and trade back a your LFS or give to a fellow hobbyist once problem is irradicated. You still may have to chemically (kalk paste, injection) the larger ones since they may not mess with them. Starting off with a larger population, your chances of having one that eats aiptaisa will increase. I wouldn't feed them for a couple days and as they search every nook and cranny of their 'new home', they will most likely chow down on the aiptasia. That process worked for me.

Good luck.

[nicksum]

I had a really bad outbreak when i could not tend to my tank after knee surgery.
I was about to kill the rock, but as last effort after several people telling me it does not work i made a thick soupy kalk mix and spread that all over the rocks infected and around any area they were... this seems to have wiped them out with out any negative effects on my fish or coral