What is the deal with aiptasia?

Hey ya'
I had quite a few on my rocks and after trying hot water and lemon juice I eventually found that my peppermint shrimp took care of some and the rest I treated with boiling hot water and vinegar. Worked perfectly. I also used a syringe not to affect any of the other corals. Anyway, that's my experience. Hope you will get rid of them soon!!!!

 

Definitely be careful of this! I was either sold camel shrimps or peppermint shrimps that refused to eat aiptasia. Either way they ended up starting to eat my corals and it took me pain-staking hours to get them both out. Still really bitter about that experience....

Anyways, the injection method works awesome, but you can only get the ones you can see unfortunately.

 

Well, I got some lemon juice and a syringe and took the rock out, squirted the little sucker and it all but melted away.

I dipped the rock in the tank to look at it and what was left I sucked up into the syringe and its totally gone now.

That was fun!!!

Lucky for me I only had 1 ....if more come up I will continue this method unless it gets out of hand then I will go the pep shrimp route or an additive solution mentioned earlier.

Thanks All!!!!

 

I just offed one in my fuge with lemon juice. It was the first time I've ever done it and if I'd known the results I would have video'd it so all could see.

It was a larger one and in the roots of my mangroves, stretched out to get the best light. I could see the the juice it ingested inside the aip! It just went limp and hung head down for about 30 seconds then started to shrivel and dissolve. With 15 minutes it was just a small pile of goo where it used to be attached to the root.

 

Fun aint it!!!!!

Dont you almost wish you had more;D

 

boiling hot water also works

 

just a head up-- you may have more than your able to see (back side of tank, hard to reach areas, ect..). like many already posted the off the shelf products work fine but its very difficult to get to all of them or even see all of them. so after you zap the ones you see try to look at what was allowing them to live. i.e. phosphates, nutrients, and having nitrates at a detectable level create a good environment for these suckers to grow. so try to take care of the water issue -- less feeding, more water flow in dead spots, carbon or GFO media, RODI water for wc and top off, ect... will help eliminate these pests IME.

 

If you only have one or two and they are small you can entomb them in some reef epoxy putty.

 

Buried Alive....I like that too!
Boy...these poor things get the cruelest deaths....

 

I treid several different ways,but found i like scalding them to there death the funnest,plus doing it that way, you don't put any chemicals in the tank!