High Tide Aquatics

Aptasia Control HELP

mray2660

mray2660

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Recently we have been able to grow Aptasia quite well. We have been trying to control it with Joe's Juice but can not seem to get ahead of it. It seems to mutilply after each treatment.

Suggestions

Mike
 
Just be aware that
1) not all pepperment shrimp eat aptaisia --potentially identifiable visually (I don't remember the differences)
2) some peppermint shrimp are known to nip at LPS -- luck?

I have 4 in my tank. At first I didn't notice anything. All the aiptaisia flourished (I had them at plague proportions)...then suddenly they went poof. I now have very few aptaisias and they are only "older ones" which I think they don't mess with.
Aside from that, they spawn in my tank and feed my wrasse :p Just had a big spawning of little guys a couple days ago. New wrasse went nuts!
 
I have had immense success with Copperband Butterflies. A long time ago, my 80 gallon was overrun with Aiptasia. They were everywhere and no amount of manual nuking was keeping them down. As a last ditch effort, I got a copperband and in two weeks, every single one was gone.

That said, I don't usually recommend Copperbands because:

1) They're hard to get eating in the first place... I had to train him from live brine to frozen mysis.
2) Once they're done with the Aiptasia, they tend to go for your corals. I watched him decimate my Tubs blues before I brought him back to the LFS.

Nowadays, I usually go peppermints (hit or miss, so I buy several) and kalk paste. (It's a lot cheaper than Joe's Juice and works the same!)
 
I'd go with the Peppermint Shrimp too. GARF swears by Copperbands but like Eight said, they nip at corals and love Feather Dusters.

I had a huge Aiptasia outbreak in my tank and bought Peppermint Shrimps to eradicate them. I ended up with 3 in my tank because I bought them individually since I know they're hit or miss. I bought one, waited a month, didn't see much happen, bought another, waited another month, didn't notice much difference, then bought a third but still saw big Aiptasias. So somebody told me to go in with Aiptasia Control and hit all the big ones. Shot Aiptasia Control over the big suckers and never seen them back. My thinking is that the Peppermints take care of the smaller ones while they just leave the big ol ones alone.

I've attached a pic of the Peppermint (Lysmata wurdemanni ) I think goes to town on Aiptasias. I found this link too (http://www.ultimatereef.net/iddb/shrimps.php) and it shows the different shrimps sold as Peppermints. Lysmata rathbunae is often sold as a Peppermint and you can distinguish them by their uniform "blocks" on their body. The first two I bought were Lysmata rathbunae and the last was a Lysmata Wurdemanni and have no Aiptasia's now. Hope that helps.
 
I agree that peppermint can't always eat aptasia, but I heard this product called Joes juice might work. It's reef safe too. I seen it on RC.

I had one long time ago, but my peppermint took care of it because it's only two.
 
Thank you for the great responses. Question any concerns with Pepermint shrimp and arrow crab, yellow tang, clown fish, emeral crab which are the other tanks mates in this tank? In our other tank we put peppermint shrimp in to help with aptasia. Our wrasse's, damsels and foxface had a very expensive snacks. We end up controlling with Joe's Juice with no problem except for one that everytime I go to treat it retracts in the rock work. For this tank in the past week it is like invasion. One day I thought I cleared them out and next day it seemed that over 20-30 more of the them. As to safety with Joe's Juice I invertantly some got into fuzzy mushroom that did not like one bit and slimmed the tank. I don't know if it is going to recover. Last night it did not look very good.

Mike
 
While peppermint may sound like a good choice, sometimes they aren't. It all depends on their personality. The ones I had ate the aptasia. Then when there was nothing left to eat and my aggressive clowns were eating all the food I put in the tank, they ate my $50 torch coral. After that the decided to nibble on my $40 xenia which eventually melted. They did spawn a lot, but then my weird clowns got hungry when I started to give them less food and I never saw the peppermint shrimp again... which made me exceptionally happy! I'm not saying they will definitely act that way, but there is a chance. Like I said, it all depends on their personalities. But if you do decide to get some and want to get them cheap, All About Fish over in Pleasant Hill sells them for $8.99 each and they have a huge variety. But if it was my decision, I wouldn't get them just to be on the safe side, yet I wouldn't use Joe's Juice either since it can be tough to target aptasia without hitting other things. Do what one of the experts that has dealt with this problem a lot before says.
 
I've also had some luck blasting the aptasias with near boiling water in a large syringe. It's an easy thing to try, just don't blast your corals. Peppermints have mostly done the trick for me but they usually dissapear on me after several months. :(
 
We added 4 peppermints and have them for a week. Have not seen any change. I guess I will need to take care of the larger ones one by one with Joe Juice. Aptasia grow well. I wish our other corals we have grew as fast.

Mike
 
We have tried many of the suggestions recommended. It just looked it has gotten worst. It appears that we are very, very good at growing Aptasi and that we have ideal conditions. Any other suggestions? Does anyone need apatsis to feed their shrimp?

The only negative that has happened in this tank is that we lost our arrow crab in the tank. I wonder if we stress him out with trying to remove the Aptasis. Any thoughts

Mike
 
berghia are a poor choice for reef tanks in general. larger aptasia can actually eat them, as can corals and other things. The do not do well at all in even moderate flow and they only eat smaller aptasia.
 
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