BAD BAD Aptasia in a 10 gal tank HELLLPPPP!!!

I have had a bad few months and havent been able to really clean my tank as well as I should. I was given a 10 gallon sw tank in really good condition but now I have over 100 aptasia. I put 12 snails and 12 hermit crabs with 2 peppermint shrimp in the tank to help witrh the clean up. The tank is looking great but the shrimp are not touching the aptasia. There are no fish in there now. How do I kill so many aptasia on a little budget. Please help THANKS 50JC.

 

You can use kalk past made from kalkwasser and inject it into them. There is also Joes juice.

 

I use kalk paste and it works great.

Two Little Fishies Peter Wilkens Kalkwassar

Take a tablespoon of the kalk, add a couple tablespoons of water, stir, use syringe to stab them in the side and inject, it only takes a little.

If you have 100 though I think I'd be careful about how many you kill daily and keep an eye on your calcium levels from all that kalk!

BTW not all peppermint shrimp will eat the aiptasia. Coral banded butterfly fish will but then they will die when they run out of aiptasia to eat (or so they say, I don't have one).

 

Kalk and other products altho work, in my experience they often come back, and with that many aiptasia i think you need a more solid soloution. A berghia nudibranch would permenantly remove them.

 

Good call on that.

That many aiptasia in such a small tank is a disaster, you'd put way too much calcium in a tank that size trying to fight them while feeling like you're not winning the war.

 

Berghia work well but with that many in the tank they may not be able to keep up with the apitasia reproduction (plus they are expensive!). I would zap as many as you can with joes or aiptasia x and then get a few berghia to wipe out the rest.

 

I suppose you could just take the rocks out and pour boiling water over them.

 

Depending on how old the tank is, what's in it, etc, I'd consider moving corals and fish to a new tank and possibly nuking the rocks with the aiptasia if you can't get it under control. 10 gal is just so small for that many!

 

Well, I know the tempting solution is to take out the rock and "nuke" or boil it, however, with as many as 50jump says there are that would mean wiping out a substantial part of the biological filter and is ill-advised. The more prudent approach is to use Aptasia X or Joes' juice and kill off 10-15 a day until they are all but eliminated.

50jump, you mentioned shrimp. Unless they are true Peppermint shrimp they won't eat them. If they are, the aptasia may be too big. Once you have killed the majority of the larger ones the shrimp will take care of the smaller ones.

 

I think even doing 10 a day they should be doing water changes very often because of the amount of calcium, what do you think?