AIPTASIA

[mariner]

O.K. Ive tried everything that I know of. They are spreading like crazy. I've tried the peppermint shrimps(they ate half of my snails) and I tried a thick kalk mix and didn't seem to work. Now there are too many to shoot up with kalk anyway. Is there any other way of getting rid of them. This is a reef tank.
I saw some type of chemical one time at a fish store called something like aptaisa rid. Has anyone heard of this? Does it work? And, can it be used with inverts? Thanks for all replys.

[ November 14, 2001: Message edited by: mariner ]</p>

 

[Anonymous]

Jeez, Mariner, that;s too bad. The kalk workded like a charm on mine. Pretty gross when I had to do it more than once though - the poor guys would grow in all deformed...

 

[naesco]

Mariner are you sure you have Peppermint shrimp as many LFS sell the imposter? The good one, Lysmata wurdemanni, has red and clear lines not red and white lines and does not have a beak.
The imposter is useless.

 

[Shaner]

Can you remove the infected rock?

If you can remove the rock, place it in an isolation tank/tub and inject directly with boiling water. You can use the iso tank to observe the rock over a period of days to make sure everything is taken care of.

If not, well its a different battle and I'm sure everyine here has a different solution.

Best of Luck

 

[mariner]

I'm positive I had the right Shrimp. It's more than one rock, it's like most of them. I let the tank go for a little while and all hell broke loose with the aiptasia. What about this stuff marine depot. sells that kills aitasia? Anyone every try it?

 

[mariner]

^

 

[micagreenmachine]

I actually LOST my peppermint shrimp 'cause they starved to death after they ate all the aiptasia. They wouldn't eat anything else! I haven't seen an aiptasia since.... (it's been about 6 months)


~Todd

btw, they didn't touch any of my snails....

 

[jiml77]

There's method that sounds scary, but works great that was suggested in the book Simplified Reefkeeping. Get Red Devil drain cleaner, which is 100% lye. Mix 1/2 teaspoon in 2-3 ounces of water in a plastic jar. Shoot a few cc's from a syringe at the little buggers and they vaporize. I did this for several weeks as I saw new ones appear and they are gone. It makes a cloudy, looking gel that just disapates in the water, or you can move the water around with your hand if the flow is low in that spot. It did not affect my water parameters in any way and did affect any corals that were nearby. Ocasionally as fish would try to eat the gel it left,but did not affect them either. The only thing it will do is sometimes leave a small white spot on the coraline where it gets bleached. It is kind of fun hunting them down and vaporizing them. The cool thing about this method, is you do not need to inject it directly into them, just get close. It is hard to get it into them when they disappear so quickly.

 

[tazdevil]

See now thats funny, I had 2 pepps (and yes they were pepps, some "humpbacks" were next to them, I could distinguish between 'em) now down to 1, and neither touched any of my aiptasia. Someone posted a while ago about mushroom anenomes actually killing aiptasia. Don't remember which thread, but the idea made sense with the explanation they gave. Maybe one of the admin. can find it??

 

[Anonymous]

my peppermints eradicated my aiptasia within 2 days. now they eat any food i put into the tank; nori, flake, pellets, frozen shrimp (cannibalism).

 

[North Bay 101]

I added a single Pepp last week and still have the buggers. I guess I will give them more time and then it's time for Kalk Injections.

 

[Anonymous]

north, how big is your tank? how bad is your aiptasia problem?

 

[eodjj]

well, I'm not a admin guy (heck this is only my second post, read alot more than I write) but do a search for
"aptasia" and "aiptasia", the second being the proper spelling.
The following thread has quite a few options:
http://www.reefs.org/ubb/ultimatebb.php?ubb=get_topic&f=1&t=026953
JJ