The Puffer Forum

Just wanted to see what you guys have personally used for dealing with Aiptasia and how successful they are, since I really don't know anythigng about the little cretins. I had about 9 in my tank on two rocks. Now, these rocks didn't have any polyps or anything on them, so I simply pulled them out and cooked 'em with a lighter. There's only two left that I couldn't find.

I was afraid to try peppermint shrimp, because I figured my GSP would murder all of them before they'd get to the aiptasia, and Joe's Juice and Aiptasia-X seems more hit or miss. Humanity has used fire as a weapon for countless years, and it is good to see that it still works, lol.

I heard someone talk about spraying them with hydrogen peroxide but I will let someone else chime in on this.

You can inject them with lemon juice if you got a steady hand and good aim, stab em in the mouth. If there is no coral on that particular rock you could remove it to a separate container first in case you get it wrong

Either my aim was bad or I was too slow when trying the various methods. I tried the insulin needle + lemon juice and it made them shrivel a bit but they sucked up inside the crevice of the rock too fast to get a good squirt. I ended up buying peppermint shrimp and they were gone in a week, and then I had to figure out how to get rid of the peppermint shrimp because they were too big. Ended up tearing the whole display apart to catch them out.

You could pull the problem rocks and put them in tub with a heater and a pump and the peppermint shrimp for a week or so to get rid of the aptasia then put the rocks back in the tank and sell the peppermint shrimp. Obviously you might have to repeat this down the road as it's hard to see all the crevices and aptasia might crop up again later.

I would avoid burning SW live rock (former or currently live) with torches and such because of the potential risk of inhaling toxins if you burn even small polyps of palys or zoas. That's how the one or two noted cases on the various reef sites of people going to the hospital from coral toxins occurred; some guy decided to torch a bunch of corals off a rock. You said there aren't corals on yours but even so there's stuff in your live rock you don't want to vaporize/burn into the air and then inhale accidentally.

My Copperband butterfly takes care of em!

Pufferpunk wrote:My Copperband butterfly takes care of em!

That's another great option if you have a large enough tank!