Berghia success (despite wrasse)

[richiev]

I want to quick share a positive story. I had a bunch of issues with aiptasia having made it into my frag tank. I think it came from a clam bought from a LFS and I didn't aggressively enough handle it. I saw them occasionally, but was mostly under control. I then had an issue where a pump went out overnight (EcoFlow overloaded when a heater kicked on...) and lost my peppermint. Turned out that peppermint was keeping everything under control because then it was an aiptasia fest.

I tried other peppermints and didn't have success, and the kalk / aiptasia-X approach went nowhere.

Eventually I hunted down some berghias, expecting them to not help really because I have a Coris and a Melanurus. To try and avoid them getting destroyed I put them in my sump to take care of aiptasia down there while I figured out something up top. Eventually I did see my sump clearing out.

Then I noticed the aiptasia in the display seemed lower, and thought maybe my occasional manual work was helping. Then one day I saw a giant, full size, adult crawling on the glass of my display.

It's been a bit longer, and now my display is almost totally clear of aiptasia. I've seen a giant berghia floating around once or twice since then, and I haven't seen the wrasses go after it.

Overall pretty happy about it and very surprised my wrasses haven't just ate em all. Maybe it's because I had a full size adult?

 

[CaseyP]

My hypothesis is that wrasses are ok eating the smaller ones but not the big ones because they contain more stinging cells. They store the stinging cells from the aiptasia they eat in their cerata, the quill like things on their back. Your wrasses may have taken a big bite and learned the hard way that they're not good to eat.