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Re: Aiptasia ID/Refugium Cycle -
07/24/07 Thanks for your thoughts. <<Very welcome>> I
have read just about every FAQ and article in the world on eradicating
these creatures. <<Really?>> Because I have only 3 or 4, I
think it seems silly at this stage to (I) invest in Peppermint Shrimp
or a butterfly that may or may not eat Aiptasia and/or may or may not
eat my mushrooms, tree coral, feather dusters and other desirable
inverts, or (ii) spend a lot of money buying Berghia. <<Not in
disagreement with you here>> I'm not convinced that buying
Super Duper Aiptasia Buster with hypodermic needle is a good use of
resources either. <<Mmm?I find an injection of lemon juice is
quite effective in most cases>> Rather, I'm thinking that my
first line of defense should be to use a small siphon tube to pull them
off the rock. <<Faulty logic I?m afraid?these pests can
regenerate/spread/multiply from the tiniest of fragments>> The
problem is that I've read conflicting advice here on WWM
<<Differences in opinion>> regarding physical removal. Some
crew members have said that it's a good first start. <<?This?
crewmember disagrees>> Others have said that physically removing
them will do nothing to solve the problem and, in fact, will only
exacerbate it by spewing Aiptasia cells all over the tank. Thoughts?
<<As stated, will regenerate from very small pieces. Either
remove the rock and let dry to kill the Aiptasia (essentially killing
the rock), or try injecting them with simple lemon juice (make take
more than one ?hit?). EricR>> Aiptasia Explosion - 07/25/05 Dear crew, <<Evening>> Thanks for all the great advice, I'm almost 1 year into salt and I'm loving it. <<Tis addictive...>> I'm having a Aiptasia explosion at this time and I don't want to harm a Nudibranch by giving it a limited supply of food then it starving to death! <<Admirable...but have you considered passing it to someone else once it clears your tank?>> I read that injecting lemon juice into the pest that you can get rid of it what do you think? <<Mixed opinions on this. I've used this method with pretty good result, though it works best when they're small. I've had others tell me it didn't work well for them at all...maybe it's in the delivery.>> I currently have a 55 gallon tank with 3 damsels, 1 green brittle star, 1 cleaner shrimp, 1 yellow tang, 2 small colonies of zoos, and plenty of coralline algae. Any advice on the lemon juice would be great, or should I fork out the $$ for the Nudibranch? <<Give the juice a try first, or maybe one of the commercial remedies. Regards, Eric R.>> Aiptasia and the next step 7/23/05 Good Morning, <Mornin' Crista, Ali here...> Thank you for your forum, it's been invaluable to my reef aquarium. <Thank you, so have you> We have an 120 reef aquarium with coral life metal halide/ compact fluorescent lighting, and a bio-ball sump, live rock, deep sand bed with plenum. Lots of macroalgae and all soft corals (Xenia, finger, leather, colt, torch, star polyps). <Try removing the bioballs, a quarter of them once a week so that in 1 month they are completely gone. Nitrates will accumulate and increase with any 'wet-dry' type of filtration. Generally in a reef tank this method of filtration isn't utilized. Your live rock and/or sand are most likely taking care of 90% of your biological filtration anyhow. Basically, dump the wet/dry and perhaps consider upgrading to higher quality protein skimmer such as the AquaC EV240.> We have blue-legged hermits, sand sifting star, emerald crab, two cleaner shrimps,2 feather dusters, 2 pincushion sea urchins and snails. Our fish are all small but growing and healthy. One false percula clownfish, one hippo tang, one orchid Dottyback (we have lots of bristleworms) 1 Allen's Damselfish, and one Pavo damselfish ( I identified them from the Scott Michael book). We have a slowly growing Aiptasia problem. I've read through your articles, we tried Kalkwasser in another tank and don't think I want to do that again. We tried peppermint shrimp and the big Aiptasia don't go away. We use a protein skimmer, make 10% monthly water changes, feed lightly, have the lights on a timing system. The Aiptasia are slowly increasing (one every month or so). I really would like to try a butterfly fish, but don't want to starve it or have any of my fish harass it too death. I am willing to sacrifice my feather dusters for the butterfly but not the rest of the corals ( they're all reproducing and it's kinda cool, ya know?). Do you recommend any particular species? I read lots about Klein, Copperband, threadfin and Burgess. <Before you consider utilizing fish, I would highly recommend a newer product that recently came out on the market called "Joe's Juice". I am not a big fan of additives, however this is one that has truly worked when it comes to terminating dreaded Aiptasia and seemingly impossible to kill majano anemones. More info. on it can be found here: http://www.joesjuice.com/ > I appreciate your time in this matter, thank you-Crista Murphy <No problemo Crista, take care and good luck. >
Epoxy to End the Existence of Aiptasia Hi crew, learn so much each day from your site!! Quick question: I have one Aiptasia on my live rock and want to get it before it spreads. I use B-Ionic 2 part for my calcium. Can I use that on it? If so, do I just use part 1? <Hmm...I have yet to hear of people using any B-Ionic on their Aiptasia problem, though it may work. Most use Kalkwasser, fresh water, or boiling water, and possibly even boiling fresh Kalkwasser water. If it is but one Aiptasia, I have a trick that I use that I think would work splendidly in your case. Purchase some epoxy used for mounting frags in reef aquaria. Take a bit, and apply it over the anemone. Make sure it sticks and stays on, applying the epoxy while the rock is held out of the water may help a bit. Then simply let it dry over the anemone. It will soon become covered in coralline and blend completely with your rock. Good luck, Mike G> - Relating a Positive Experience: Joe's Juice - Not really a question but I wanted to let people know of my experience with Aiptasia and how I'm getting it under control. I have a tank with mainly soft corals and one bubble coral. A yellow tang and a mated pair of clowns who live in the bubble coral. I have had thousands of Aiptasia invade my tank probably because of excess nutrients from feeding the fish as they were larger in the area where I fed them. I placed an order for some Berghia sea slugs at www.reefacuarium.com and they charged my card and did not ship out any slugs or respond to any emails and their listed phone number doesn't work, beware of doing business with them. Anyway I resorted to using chemicals and tried Kalkwasser in a syringe, this was messy and burned my other corals and coralline algae and the Aiptasia would just spawn more before they might die. I then tried out Joes Juice and the results for me were fantastic. The anemones would disappear within minutes and no disc or seeds of them remained. It seems to work better on larger anemones and on ones you can get it onto their central disk so ones attached to the side of something are hard to get. It didn't kill the coralline under the anemones and didn't affect my corals, even my fan worm got some on it and is perfectly fine. A small bottle of the stuff kills a large number of anemones. I am still working on the problem but I would say that half of them have been killed with only two treatments, the others are small and hard to reach. Thought people might want to give this a try if other methods are failing for them. <Thanks for sharing. Have used and know several people who use Joe's Juice... a very useful product. Cheers, J -- > Joe's Juice Ain't so Juicy! Watch out for Miracle Cures Hello WWM crew, I can't say enough about the Book of Coral Propagation and Reef Invertebrates books. Thank you for the sound advice and wealth of your experiences. Also love your web site. I don't have a question but a comment about Joe's Juice. In two separate instances, in two separate tanks, friends of mine have used this on Aiptasia. They both had Turbinaria and Galaxea that reacted very poorly to the exposure of Joe's Juice. The effects were not instantaneous but within a few days the damage to the corals was apparent and they soon died. I couldn't say for a fact that there wasn't some other factor but considering they both had healthy tanks I feel this is something that should be taken into consideration before using. Thanks again for all your contributions. Shaun <Shaun, I would like to first say that the similarities are cause for concern. Second, you should always be leery of anything you put into your tank that is not found there naturally or used to try and create a natural environment. With that said, Joe's Juice is still a relatively new product and "should" not effect anything other than Aiptasia. If used incorrectly it could effect other corals. There are too many factors that could have caused the demise of those corals. You are correct in that anything used to kill something in your tank should be taking STRONG consideration before using. Good Luck. MikeB.> Recurring Aiptasia Date: Tue, 01 Feb 2005 Kalkwasser?
What is that and where can I get it? <Helana, Kalkwasser is
commonly used by marine aquarists to raise the calcium levels of their
water. It can be had at most aquarium stores that deal in saltwater.
Also can be purchased at Drs. Foster & Smith or Premium Aquatics,
just about any on-line aquarium store.> Also, I can't imagine
injecting anything into the Aiptasia, because they are so small,
they're no concrete place to poke them...they're all
fingery.?? <Get a small syringe and just insert it in to what
looks like the center of the Aiptasia, and give it a "shot".
James (Salty Dog)> What is this anemone - Action Before Thinking Date: Thu, 10 Feb 2005 I went ahead and nuked with Joe's Juice. <Chris, I think I would have waited until I knew what it was. There are so many different kinds of anemones that are reef safe so better to identify first.> Better to be safe than sorry. I think that there is another one growing if it gets bigger I will try to shoot again. <Try to take a clearer pic of it and send it, maybe someone on the wet web can identify it. James (Salty Dog)> Killing Aiptasia Dear Adam, I love my corals, macro algae and my fish, but the thing that makes my aquarium attractive is my live rock. < I wish more people thought the way you do. > Every night before bedtime I spend 10 minutes observing all the critters that crawl out of it. Once a week I notice something new or different. As usual the WWM website shines as an awesome resource as I try to identify my new 'guest.' I could be satisfied with a tank full of live rock and nothing else! < I as well. > Last night I noticed two new critters! One was shaped like a cone or a pyramid with rounded edges with a hole on top. Sounds like a limpet of some sort. < Probably a key hole limpet. > The other looked like a huge hydra -almost 2cm across. It had a clear body with about 8-10 clear tentacles coming to a point. It looked like the Aiptasia pictures except it was clear and had a lot less tentacles. < Maybe a curly Q anemone. > Not wanting to take a chance I decided to 'Kalk' him this morning. < Okay, but I would have kept it. > I boiled half a cup of water and mixed a tablespoon of Kalk, took some live rock apart to gain access to him poured 10cc of this solution right on top him -he was already withdrawn in to a hole so I couldn't get it right in to his mouth and had to just target the general area. The Kalk slurry coagulated and settled down on a 2" square area of the live rock. A minute later an 8 tentacled head popped up from under the slurry, with the tentacles all bent out of shape. The next time I looked there as nothing. Is he dead or did he float away to find a new spot? Did I do the Kalk thing right or is it imperative to inject in to his mouth? < I think he is probably toast. You don't have to inject their mouth, in fact probably better to just shoot the whole disc. It may detach and attach somewhere else, but I wouldn't worry much about it. > Thank You, Narayan < Blundell > Joe's Juice We've have success with this product around Zoa before. The Aiptasia actually have to eat the product, though that appear gone in minutes it takes a little longer to for them to die. If you spill on anything other then the intended target, you just have to swish the product into the water column. Don't let is sit there! Does this answer your question? << I think this is sound advise. I would also consider leaving the Aiptasia alone. >> << Blundell >> Aiptasia on Zoa Stolon Hello Gang, I have a question I was unable to find in the archives. Do you have any safe methods for removing Aiptasia from a Zoanthid colony stolon? The Peppermints haven't touched them, and I don't have enough to support an Aiptasia eating Nudi, and squirting Kalk has caused too much collateral damage. I'm stumped! Thanks for your help. Brook <Hello, Brook MikeB here. Your situation is difficult to say the least. I would suggest trying a different product that Kalkwasser. Have you tried Chem Marin's "Stop Aiptasia" or "Joe's Juice". They are usually successful at eliminating those buggers. Let me know. MikeB.> Eradicating Aiptasia OK have read everything I can find on these pesky buggers. Have a very mild problem so far, all are on one rock bar about two or three. <That's not too bad...not yet at least.> I will probably try injecting with vinegar/lemon juice but will have to buy a syringe first. <A syringe is a good idea for injecting the Aiptasia. I've had great success by injecting individuals with a calcium hydroxide paste (also known as Kalkwasser). Simply mix the Kalkwasser with aquarium water until you have a thick paste. Then suck some up with a syringe and inject the Aiptasia.> might try sucking them off as per Bobs suggestion on your site. But what I want to know is with the hyper/hypo salinity dip type method (as they are pretty much all on one isolated rock) will this harm my Caulerpa and coralline on same rock, is one or the other better (hypo/hyper)? How long in solution would be necessary, a few minutes/hours/days? Then I assume rinse and replace and remain vigilant for repopulations. <I wouldn't recommend hyposalinity for a few Aiptasia when it would be much more simple to simply inject them with a calcium hydroxide paste. To answer your question, yes, it may effect your coralline growth if you do decide to use hyposalinity. However, coralline can grow fairly quickly in a mature environment. It may also effect the Caulerpa growth, although I doubt it should make any major impact on the algae. I should also point out that Peppermint shrimp (Lysmata wurdemanni) may also help in consuming these pesky anemones. However, from my experience, it's a hit and miss with peppermint shrimp. Some choose to eat Aiptasia, others simply ignore it. I hope this helps. Please feel free to email us with any further questions. Graham.> Fun With Aiptasia - 03/27/2004 (Borax food bombs) Good evening Bob <Sabrina here today, hoping' to help out.> Need help, I an being over run by Aiptasia anemones, <Yikes!> Tried chemicals, vinegars etc with no luck. <Tried, how, exactly? I had a great deal of fun injecting Aiptasia with Kalkwasser when I had an infestation. You'll need a syringe with a needle, like a diabetic's syringe. Just mix up some Kalk, exactly same procedure as you would use to drip in your tank, and when it's ready, fill the syringe with Kalkwasser, and (carefully!) sneak up on the Aip with the syringe. Aim to poke the syringe into the stalk, near the bottom, so when you move it won't have time to react. Stab the needle in, and unload some Kalk into the Aiptasia. It should start to shrivel immediately. If you miss, and it retracts into its hole, follow it in with the syringe. If you're careful, you'll feel the needle poke into some softness, that's the Aip. Unload some Kalk, and with all due luck, it won't ever come back out.> Is there something else? <You could try Joe's Juice, http://www.joesjuice.com/ . I have not used this, but have heard that it works quite well, and is true to its claim of being reef-safe.> The one problem you should know about I do have large Colt coral so I not sure any fish would helpful. What do you think. <You might be able to try using peppermint shrimp, but they can turn against corals and pick at 'em a bit, kind of a 50-50 toss up with pepps.> Thanks for any help! <Wishing you luck in your war with Aiptasia, -Sabrina> Aiptasia elimination fluid - snake oil? 2/1/04 Hi again, I saw in Premium Aquatics a product called "Joes Juice 20ML Aiptasia Eliminator ". Any experience with that? Thanks, Thanassis <no experience with it at all my friend... but I stand firmly by my position/recommendation to never add chemicals/supplements/"Magic" products of unknown composition (mystery ingredients) to my aquarium. There are too many lives and too much $ at risk. Moreover, I'd like to see that some testing has been done to demonstrate and explain how such products can kill one species/type of cnidarian in a tank of many without harming the others. It defies logic and such products almost always offer no explanation beyond their superlative marketing claims. kindly, Anthony> Aiptasia problems II (12-15-03) Cody:<Howdy Scott!> Thank you for your response. <No problem!> I have a 58 gallon tank and it has been established for 10 months, with the live rock contained in it from a prior tank that had been established for 3 months. I currently have the yellow tang, a coral beauty, two clowns and the long nose hawkfish.<Hmm, I think the crew you have right now would be a too tough for the butterfly. You could try injecting the buggers with a syringe of boiling water, this isn't the most effective way but its worth a try. Other than that just keep your nutrients down and they shouldn't become a problem. Cody> Thanks. Scott -Fruit juice your Aiptasia to death!!!- Hey crew! You have a great site and crew at wet web media. Thank you for all the information you provide. You guys save many lives (fish). <Hehe, and the lives of the more stressed out aquarists... ;) > Just wanted to let you know I've discovered injecting Aiptasia anemone with lemon juice to be an effective way of eliminating them. I injected 3 large Aiptasia with lemon juice and by the next day they were gone. <Cool! I may try it with my plethora of Anemonia.> I couldn't find any information on this on your site (did the search) and so just wanted to let you know. Here is a link to the method: http://saltaquarium.about.com/library/weekly/aa061903.htm <Interesting article, it's pretty neat to see just what people are attempting to squirt in their tanks to kill these things! Will post for all to see and take a stab (pun definitely intended) at! Thanks. -Kevin> Regards, Jason Deep Sand Bed and Aiptasia Control Hi Don, Thanks for your help. I did increase the deep of my Sand Bed. Right now is like 3 1/2". I did wrong the calculations to have 4+". Later I will increase a little bit more to have what you suggested. <3.5" is OK. I would not worry about it and add more later as you can> When I did the 50% water change, I vacuumed the existing Sand as much as I could and I discover that there are a lot of worms. These guys are like 1 or 2" long. Some of them are very thin but other are a little bit wide with a lot of very small arms, live the serpent star arm. The color of the worms is like pink. Is this a pest that I have to get rid of? Or these guys are part of the desirable fauna? <I don't get too excited about worms like this as they will help keep the sand stirred> I read the article regarding Aiptasia and the Q&A. I got king of confused. When it is mentioned to use a hypodermic syringe to directly applied Ca(OH)2, this means inject the liquid or just put the syringe the closest to the Aiptasia and run the liquid trying to spray all the Aiptasia? can this be done inside the main tank? How much of this Ca(OH)2 is needed for each Aiptasia? I read that some one use white vinegar. Is this secure to use this in the main tank? <Try to get the Kalk into the Aiptasia, which will likely be difficult. If that is not possible, get the solution as near as possible. Turn off all the pumps to allow the tank to settle before application. I have not spoken from anyone who has successfully used vinegar but I have read of decent success. It should take a very small amount of solution to have an affect.> Also I am going to try with the peppermint shrimps and the Hairy Red Legged. I returned the bicolor to the dealer so the shrimps are save now. <Excellent to hear> I hope this is not bothering you too much. <No worries, it is why we are here! Good luck with your search and destroy mission<G>, Don> Thanks a lot, Rodrigo. Aiptasia control... Hiya Bob :o) <Hello> Since setting up our Trigon 350 tank about 8 months ago we have had Aiptasia living relatively peacefully on a football sized/shaped piece of live rock. In fact when we first introduced the rock in question it was covered with greenery and Aiptasia, but these soon died down and all but disappeared. A few months back they started reappearing slowly and recently began to multiply at quite an alarming rate. After seeking advice online and considering the severity of the infestation (the rock was literally covered with about 30-40 of them) we took the rather drastic action of submerging the rock in question in a tub of boiling water. 20 minutes later and after a quick scrub and rinse to remove debris the rock was back in the tank and completely Aiptasia free. However, life's never quite that simple is it... <Not to my experience> some of them had begun to travel to other adjacent rocks/corals and boiling everything in the tank wouldn't really have been that good an idea. So, following advice from people on WWM we tried injecting them with distilled (white) vinegar. Sure enough, they shriveled away and we haven't seen head or tail of them since. And on the off chance that one got away (there's always one) there's plenty of vinegar to spare :o) Just thought I'd add another thumbs up to the use of vinegar. <Thank you> For reference, we have the following setup: Trigon 350 (350 litre) corner unit, internal jumbo jewel filter, external Fluval 403 (with inline U.V filter), protein skimmer, 4 arcadia fluorescent tubes (3x marine white, 1x marine blue actinic) Live sand substrate (about 6" deep), ~70kgs of live rock. 2x Clarkii clowns, 2x Humbug damsels, 1x Blue damsel, 1x Velvet neon, 2x Blue cheek gobies 1x Red Feather Starfish (Himerometra), 1x Crocea Clam, 2x Peppermint shrimps (MIA, possibly in hiding), 2x red leg hermits (not white spotted hairy) Several colourful hard & soft corals, polyps, etc. (We also have a smaller tank with a Picasso trigger, coral banded shrimp (8 months old) and several hermit crabs... water quality pretty much identical to the main one... but that's another story) <Surprised the trigger has not bothered the crustaceans (yet)> Everything seems to be going pretty well so far - after a bit of an initial disaster and the loss of several fish (all within the space of a week) we haven't had one casualty for 7 months now save for a couple of fish added recently which lasted less than an hour before being eaten by the other fish.... For any water changes we just used boiled tap water - as far as we've been able to tell it hasn't had any negative effects on the water quality. As for tests we usually do them every one or two weeks (Ph 8.2, Phosphate 0.5, Ammonia 0.4, Nitrate 10 (falling slowly), Nitrite 0, Alkalinity/KH 4.4/12.35, Salt 29ppm, Calcium 460)... The only additives we use are a twice weekly dosage of phytoplankton and Kent Iodine once a week. However we're waiting for a Magnesia supplement (not magnesium) to be made commercially available to make keeping Goniopora for a long time possible. <Interesting> Feeding consists of 1 frozen brine shrimp tablet and 1 frozen red plankton tablet a day supplemented with regular small sprinklings of marine flake food (which pretty much disappears as soon as it hits the surface - I'm sure those fish would eat the whole tub if I let them at one sitting) Is there anything we're missing in our tests or do things seem fine to you? <All sounds fine> As far as we can tell everything is very healthy and growing - as I said no problems at all in 7 months. Are there any other fish/corals/inverts you'd recommend? At the moment choosing new inhabitants seems to consist of visiting the local marine store, seeing something unusual (in the ooh, I've got to have one of those sense), checking for compatibility and whipping out the ol' credit card :o) <Keep an open mind, eyes... something will come up> Anyway, what started out as a quick comment about Aiptasia rapidly turning into an essay so I'd better stop before I get really carried away... Keep up the good work with WWM... hope to hear from you soon, Martin & Lynsey :o) <Be chatting, Bob Fenner>
Bristle worm (and Aiptasia eradication success!) Dear Mr.
Fenner I read a previous article concerning glass anemone eradication
using a vinegar injection. I used this method and found it to be a huge
success. Today I noticed a big bristle worm in one of my rocks. I tried
baiting and waiting it out, but no success. Then I thought I'd try
injecting it with vinegar or injecting vinegar into its cave - I tried
the latter and out popped the worm - 15cm long - I then netted it.
<Thank you for this "data point"... Full strength white
vinegar? How did you administer it? Bob Fenner> Jolene Aiptasia and "stop-Aiptasia" Hello Bob (or JasonC)! <<It's JasonC, hello!>> Thanks for all your good counsel in the past. As per your last comments, I won't be adding both the powder blue tang and the sohal to my tank. I think for now, we'll be trying the former. <<ahh, ok... make sure you take home a good one, if the LFS only gets one and it's not looking good, don't take it. I only say this because I too know what it's like to have your heart set on a fish with cash in hand.>> Anyway, on to my main point. I purchased a couple of small live rocks the other day, which had nice mushrooms, a small sponge, several clear-white-disc shaped anemones, and a bunch of feather dusters. They also had plenty of coralline, and are real pretty in the tank. <<ok>> Unfortunately, they also introduced my first Aiptasia specimens. <<joy, not.>> Not knowing what they were when they first appeared (about 8 hours after being introduced), we watched them with delight. A few days later, after seeing them reposition themselves, and thinking back about the word "Aiptasia", I thought I'd better check into what glass anemones actually look like. Sure enough, that's what I've got! So, I've read a bunch on your website, and I plan to introduce a few peppermint shrimp (not camel!). <<good plan>> However, I'd really not like to put in a copper-banded, since they're more difficult to keep and I'm not too interested in having them pick at my other corals. (I will be purchasing a pyramid butterfly, though... is there any history on these guys eating Aiptasia?) <<not that I know of, but most butterflies are not to be trusted in a captive reef - enjoy eating anything/everything too much, some others ONLY eat coral polyps.>> I read a review about a product called "stop-Aiptasia", and checked out other message boards. <<snake oil in my opinion.>> At this point, I haven't heard anything negative about its use, but didn't even see it mentioned in your site. Do you have reservations about its use, or experience with it? <<no personal experience, but do have experience in environmental toxicology and know/understand that there are very few single-target mechanisms that aren't actually wider-spectrum toxins. What did he say??? There is nothing super unique to Aiptasia, biology-wise which means if it kills Aiptasia, it can kill its cousins.>> It claims to be reef safe, extremely effective, and comes with a small injector syringe. <<And that part especially seems like a lot of work. Check those instructions carefully - I can just imagine somewhere in the fine-print, "Don't let the syringe leak while in the tank - solution toxic and must be dosed locally to have any affect." Again, no experience but very skeptical, if you couldn't tell ;-) Much prefer the peppermint shrimp plan.>> As always I appreciate your thoughts and time. Sincerely, Jim Raub <<no problem. Cheers, J -- >> Aiptasia - Easy Solution for Mild Infestation Hi Robert, I read over the Faq on Aiptasia anemones which I had quite a few of. I found the easiest method of getting rid of them was to visit the local drug store and purchase a long-needled syringe. I then added 1 ml of white vinegar to the syringe. I directly injected each Aiptasia with about .10 ml of the vinegar and death was instantaneous, whether I hit an arm, base or mouth. It cured my problem in about 10 minutes and there have been no changes in chemistry due to the extremely small amount of solution required to do the trick. This wouldn't work with a serious infestation but for a mild infestation it was the perfect solution. The main reason I did not want to add a "natural predator" for the Aiptasia is because I have FINALLY reached a perfect balance with my fish, invertebrates, corals, and anemone. Everybody is at peace, nobody picking on anything, and all cohabitating well within their own little hideouts. That took a great deal of trial and error, and I'm unwilling to upset the apple-cart if I don't have to! -Bev Alstrom <Thank you for this... do hope the Aiptasia are "really gone" for you here... a cell or two remaining... and they can/do "come right back"... Agree with your apparent attitude/opinion re balance. Bob Fenner, who will post your solution to the chemical eradication of this pest anemone group to the WWM site> Aiptasia Control I am about a month into the setup of my new 120 gallon Reef setup, and two weeks ago introduced some live rock. I have been searching the net on all subjects related to marine setups, just to become informed, and to see what I could learn. <Sounds good> In reading FAQ's on your web site on Aiptasia control at wetwebmedia, I immediately changed my opinion on these darling little anemones which had come along with the rock. I started with 3, and two weeks later there were 18. <Arggghhhh, if only our bank accounts grew as quickly!> Now I am better informed, I sat and looked at them, decided I better rid myself of them immediately, and then I was struck by an idea. I took a turkey baster and tried to suck them up. That didn't work, but then I decided to boil some tap water, and sucked it into the turkey baster, and then placed the tip of the baster near the mouth of the anemone, and then squirted the hot water onto it , in a controlled manner, so it took about 10 seconds to empty the baster. The anemone immediately "cooked", and appears quite lifeless. <Hmm, this is a tried, but not that true method...> The advantage of this is that the collateral damage to the area surrounding is virtually zero. I hope this is of use to you Phillip Holbrook <Will post your apparent (to date) success... As I say, very often "they'll be baaaaack"... Look to bio-controls next, or the time after... Bob Fenner> I use C-Balance to supplement calcium and alkalinity in my system, and also as a solution to inject Aiptasia with. Part A of C-balance is a solution of calcium chloride along with lesser amounts of other salts (which give a natural seawater residual when used in equal amounts along with Part B, which is largely sodium carbonate/bicarbonate along with lesser amounts of other salts). I have found that I can use Part A to inject Aiptasia. If you get the needle into the column (especially if you get a good jab near the foot) and basically inflate the anemone with the C-Balance, the Anemones are killed quite well. I don't use Part B for injection because it forms a precipitate when initially mixed with seawater that I'm afraid might irritate nearby organisms (normally, C-Balance is added to a strong water stream where the precipitate is dissipated quickly so that it redissolves), but I do add the same amount of Part B to the system as what I inject into the anemones. This balances the Part A used for injection and maintains proper water chemistry. I like this approach because it seems to get around the problems inherent to using hydrochloric acid (Muriatic acid) or other solutions for injection that would deplete alkalinity or cause other water chemistry imbalances. This would be a viable option to try even if you don't otherwise use C-Balance for calcium/alkalinity maintenance. I'd think B-ionic could be used just the same way, though if I'm not mistaken, it is Part B of B-ionic that is the calcium chloride part (don't take my word for this though...check the label to be sure). The problem with all of these injection methods, however, is that I have quite a few Aiptasia in awkward places and/or anchored in deep holes in rock where I have yet to succeed in getting the needle into the anemone's base! Bill These do not have the tentacles like the Aiptasia. The stem and bubbles both appear to be smooth. There is really no color to them either. The bubbles are clear and the stem is pink on the inside. I have looked at various books but have yet to find a picture of it. Thanks for the quick response. >> Hmm, well, there are about a thousand other possibilities! :), so keep your eyes on these (I'd separate their rock physically from the rest of the material so they find it harder to "jump". or sting your other livestock...), keep up a monthly regimen of activated carbon use to reduce the likelihood of chemical interactions... Bob Fenner Brown Rock Anemone Bob I have a real problem with these Brown
Rock Anemone & they are starting to really take off covering my
Live Rock. I have tried boiling hot water injections ha ha with no
success. Is there any chance of getting rid of these unsightly pests. I
bought a Arrow Crab & he is doing very little to help this problem,
any suggestions would greatly be appreciated Thanks Kemper <And
thank you for writing... Have stored my complete rundown on these pesky
Aiptasia, Glass Anemones in an article and FAQs at the URL:
www.wetwebmedia.com, and have a picture there of a promising
predator... a filefish that is still in short supply. Do consider the
Peppermint Shrimp and/or Nudibranch solution posted at WWM... and, I
wish you well. Bob Fenner> |
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