Injecting Aiptasia - what do I use, how do I get it?

[AQUADOC]

Again, try boiling hot water in a small syringe and inject it directly into the Aiptasia. It will turn stringy white and dissolve almost immediately. You can either net out the remains or your skimmer, if adequate, will skim out the by products. Worked 100% and I did not have to use additives, animals, or other "orthodox methods". When I first started in the industry, there were, as in these threads, numerous "good ideas and methods", but after trying several of the good intentioned ideas I found, ran into an old reef aqauarist who had had reef systems for over 40 years.
It does not affect your salinity, PH, or other pertinent chemical structures of the water column. After doing the injections for several hours, of course you may want to do a partial water change. Your call....(hate to see you have to dry out good rock to get rid of the little buggers and endanger good livestock on rock.)
Aquadoc-

 

[AQUADOC]

Again, try boiling hot water in a small syringe and inject it directly into the Aiptasia. It will turn stringy white and dissolve almost immediately. You can either net out the remains or your skimmer, if adequate, will skim out the by products. Worked 100% and I did not have to use additives, animals, or other "orthodox methods". When I first started in the industry, there were, as in these threads, numerous "good ideas and methods", but after trying several of the good intentioned ideas I found, ran into an old reef aqauarist who had had reef systems for over 40 years.
It does not affect your salinity, PH, or other pertinent chemical structures of the water column. After doing the injections for several hours, of course you may want to do a partial water change. Your call....(hate to see you have to dry out good rock to get rid of the little buggers and endanger good livestock on rock.)
Aquadoc-

 

[Anonymous]

two questions, because I'm noob:

1. "After doing the injections for several hours," ... HOURS? You sit there for hours and squirt boiling water into the things?

2. If you're squirting boiling water in there for hours, won't it reduce the salinity (i am assuming the boiling water is freshwater)

 

[AQUADOC]

Answer 1- no, you don't have to sit there for hours, though you may want to after you have put a dent in your Aiptasia problem.
Answer 2- It won't affect your salinity as you are using a 10cc syringe (insulin type) and what little bit of water in your system won't make any difference in your salinity. Of course, you won't want to just inject hot water into your rock directly, killing organisms ON the rock, but just the anenome itself. As I stated in an earlier post, either in the hole the ananome withdraws into, or the anenome's stalk. How long you sit/stand there depends on how bad you want to get rid of them and how bad the problem really is. If you don't have much live rock in your system, chances are you can make a BIG dent in them and get ahead of them, finally getting rid of 90% of them, BUT....if you have say, 2-300 lbs of rock in your tank, and infested very heavily, then it's a different story altogether...
Aquadoc-

 

[Anonymous]

wow i thought it would only take one good scalding (one squirt with the syrenge) with boiling water to kill it. hmmm.

is it possible that the 10CC's of water are cooling rapidly when you transfer the water from the boiling source to the syrenge then to the pest anemone? because of the small volume (10cc) it probably loses 90% of it's heat in about 3 seconds once you remove it from the heat source.

i'm not being picky, i just think i prefer this method to chemicals and want to find a good way to do make this work.

 

[Anonymous]

I'd think that water at 200 degrees F would stay hot enough to kill a small organism longer that a few seconds. You have to figure that the Aptasia are used to water around 80 degrees. SO, 10ml of water that's even 125 degrees would probably do it.

(I use B-Ionic alkalinity)

B

 

[ChrisRD]

I've used a heavy kalk mix (consistency of milk) in the past with excellent results. I don't inject, just coat the aptasia and let it sit on the spot for a few minutes (turn pumps off). I boil the mixture in the microwave right before application. Boiling water by itself or kalk by itself IME is was not very effective with this application method, but the combination (boiling kalk) seems to be lethal about 99% of the time. You can get very close to the aptasia (say 1/2" away) to keep the "blast radius" to a minimum.

 

[ChrisRD]

The final weapon to these insufferable brown pains in my butt is drying out the rocks for a while enough to kill the anemones but (hopefully) not everything else. I would like to try predators first as I have nothing to lose, my question is this, what would be most recommended given my circumstances? Shrimp, fish, nudibranch? Something else? I need help.

I would recommend you NOT dry out the rock as you will kill a lot of useful stuff and probably cause your tank to recycle.

Your best bet would probably be to get a few peppermint shrimp (be sure to get the real peppermints - Lysmata wurdemanni). If, as you say, you're moving your fish to another tank you won't have to feed the main tank much (if at all). Once the peppermints get hungry enough they will devour aptasia IME.

Check this link out: http://www.inlandaquatics.com/info/faq_aiptasia.html

 

[Ocyurus]

Your best bet would probably be to get a few peppermint shrimp (be sure to get the real peppermints - Lysmata wurdemanni).

I know the species of peppermints are very similar in appearance what is the best way to make sure you have the species you came for?

 

[ChrisRD]

I know the species of peppermints are very similar in appearance what is the best way to make sure you have the species you came for?

http://www.reefs.org/library/article/hopkins_redfield.html

Also, you could do an internet search to find some pics and compare.

A decent LFS should know if they have Lysmata wurdemanni or not, so I wouldn't worry too much - just buy from a place you trust. If there's no good LFSs near you there are lots of good places online.

HTH

 

[srbayless]

Howdy,

Also had an aptasia problem in my 55g when it was up and running. Purchased a plastic syringe from my local vet, they use them for feeding baby animals and such. They are the type with a non-threaded opening. Then boiled some water in the microwave, stirred in an enormous amount of Kalk. The mixture was almost paste, but still viscous enough to be pulled into the syringe. Then I just pointed the syring right in front of the aptasia's mouth and squirted the contents in.

Net/net, they all died nice nasty deaths and never returned. I lived happily ever after and peace and tranqulity reigned throughout the world

Good luck,

Scott.

 

[AQUADOC]

You don't use the whole 10cc on one anenome, unless it is the size of a dollar bill.....Aiptasia are usually small and don't get very large so, with this in mind, 10cc can be used on several of them with results...You can also, to keep the water inside of the syringe from cooling too fast, wrap the syringe in a thin layer of wrapping styrofoam (thin sheet of flexible type) and duct taping it around the syringe. Helps but again, how bad do you want to get rid of them....? You will get out of it what you put into it I always used to say upon taking on the task of injection time for the Aiptasia! On one system (100 gallon) in the beginning, I spent around 5 hours one night doing this. The next morning...Whola!!! Almost all gone. I just had to keep at it until they were manageable. (less than 1 million in the tank)...lol
Aquadoc-