New Tank and Live Rock Help!

Try and inject each aptasia either in the foot or right in the mouth with boiling water in a scringe/needle you can get em at the drug store. No need to boil all the rock just the aptasia.

 

Or you can get one of those little torch lighters instead of nuking it all like I said above. It won't survive that.

 

Just wanted to add my own personal experience with this stuff. My rock had a lot of aiptasia including a very large one that I would target feed, before I knew what it was, because it was cool to watch it eat shrimp. At any one time you could see at least 20-40 of the little guys throughout the tank.

I added one peppermint shrimp to a 55 gallon that has about 50 lbs of rock in it and I'm hard pressed to find even a single aiptasia at this point. He has an incredible taste for the stuff, but as posted previously each shrimp is different.

You have to make sure you get a peppermint shrimp, and not the other one that looks similar (camel shrimp).

I would say it's worth a try though. That rock looks pretty alive and you may not want to kill everything on it just to get rid of these things that have a natural predator already.

And just for fun, here's my shrimp meeting the larger aiptasia. Which was gone within a week

 

If I am assembling the reef scape there are going to be some in locations I will no longer be able to reach. Will those die off from lack of light?

 

They can survive in very low light. I would suggest dealing with them before assembling your reef scape.

 

Keep in mind aptasia can move (toward the light if it wants). +1 to Peps. The first pair I bought didn't eat the stuff and died shortly after a couple weeks or so due to my own stupidity. The ones I bought after cleaned the take of aptasia totally from what I can tell. I tried Joes Juice during my tank cycle and it did help control it but the Peps worked best for me. I was pretty happy because the rock I bought looked really nice otherwise.

 

that rock has some huge brittle stars on it?

 

First pic.

 

IMO i wouldnt nuke the rock. i had thousands in a tank of mine, 1 shrimp and a bottle aipX and they were done. Just my thaughts.

 

It's a serpent star