Come here my pretty!

Aiptasia the bane of soo many hobbyist. Treatments have been mixed for me.

1. Application of Joes juice, kalk, lemon juice: They all returned after a couple of months.

2. Peppermint shrimp: Very effective, but the havoc they wreaked on the system by eating corals and anemones was not worth it for me personally..

3. Blue velvet nudibranch: Very effective as well but not long term. They need aiptasia to live. Once the aiptasia are gone so are they.

4. Copper band butterfly: Effective, but delicate and not worth removing from the wild IMO.

Corals that kill.

Hydnophora, Galaxy, Favia are just some of the corals known to have a sting worthy of killing aiptasia.

The pic provided is a pic of a Hynophora frag and it's proximity to a especially ugly aiptasia. The goal, to see how close the frag has to be to be effective and how effective it is long term. You can see the aiptasia to the lower right of the hynophora frag.

 

Interesting thread Corailline

I have always mentioned Joes Juice and Aiptasia X when giving advice about dealing with Aiptasia and have used the latter a few times with succes

but on a 5 gallon nano I had , the same treatment failed terribly in fact I started with 3 and in my attempts to inject/ cover these 3 which obviously withered quickly thus convincing me I had beaten them, came back a week or so later with a whole new family
of mini replicas

Steve

 

I use a small squeeze bulb syringe and a coffee cup full of boiling tank water and slowly scald them to death then release the bulb,sucking the dead body right up with no return.But now i have a similar problem,one of my new zoa colonies has one right in the middle of the colony,so my little trick won't work there.

 

Good point Steve I should probably include the type of system in the thread.

 

I big thank you goes out to pink4miss.

The Bergihia is the nudibranch that eats aiptasia.

The velet is the nudi that eats flatworms.

Thank you for keeping me honest. :

 

your welcome.

after trying the joes juice 2 years back and the aiptasia x recently. i feel the joes juice works better... i had better luck with that one. the aiptasia x has the aiptasia popping right back up where it was after a week or so.

 

great thread here! interesting to see the progression of this and if it will completely kill the aptasia or if it will just sting it until its all shriveled up and "appears" to be gone.

I am following along!

 

Very cool thread here. I treated with joes juice took three treatments on many of them I tried boiling water and getting them that way effective more so. I combined they two first joes then hitting them after with boiling water and wam ooohhhh.... I dont see any left now. I do have a couple manjos though any imput on these or a new thread about that would be cool.

 

so you may actually be having success with Joes or Apt x but if you dont get them all even those you cannot see, they will return. I make my own killer of Aptasia that works 100% for me. it is a variation of Kalk paste and is an OLD recipe from Tangster. Ive known about it for years and used it to kill anything I wanted. its cheap and very easy to make.

take a tbsp of Mrs wages pickling lime and mix with with RO water to a toothepaste consistancy. then add 1/2tps of powdered red pepper (yes the stuff you put in your food to make it hot) and then a few drops of your favorite hot sauce like Tabasco, Louisiana hor sauce or Texas Pete (yummy). put it on a microwave safe plate and heat it till it is bubbly. remove and add in a bit of water if needed. I like it slightly on the runny side so it goes thru the syringe well, but is still a paste. Spoon it into a 5ml syringe like in your salifert test kit and then put a drop in their mouths. they will melt and be gone in a VERY short while never to return from that spot. I had a pair recently on a rock that some zoa's came on. two drops and they were history. the zoa's have filled back in and you cant tell they were ever there.

this stuff will kill anything from aptasia, Mojanos, GSP and pavona. it is reef safe but taste like sh^t.

Also, pavona still produce longer stingers than Hydnopora and will pack a slightly stronger punch. that is the only stuff that woudl actually come back quickly on me if you didnt get it all.

hope this helps