next chapter: Aiptasia

still new to the hobby, seems to be a never ending battle.....i love it. Noticed a couple polyp looking things on a rock a couple weeks ago, figured it was aiptasia. noticed today they have spread, and its definitly aiptasia.

gonna try and nip this one before it gets out of hand. gonna try the natrual approach first with peppermint shrimp. i know its kinda iffy but figure its worth a shot.

anyone have any fool proof ways of ID between lysmata californica and wurdemanni????? going to go look at a couple LFSes tomorrow.
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Peppermint Shrimp Imposters: Lysmata wurdemanni is the Real Aiptasia-Eater for the Reef Tank

 

I don't see lysmata californica sold at LFS's due to it's colder water environment.

If you're talking about the camelback (
Rhynchocinetes uritai) , it's pretty easy to tell just by the patterns and the eye shape.

 

Are they all on one rock and are you able to take it out of the tank? If so I would just take it out and let it dry...then scrub and soak it in rodi then put it back in your tank.

If not, aptasia x works well. I just spend the day trying it out on our 125 coral tank at the store.

 

I read on here that you can inject Aiptasia with white wine vinegar so i did! I took a meat injector that I bought for the tank and sucked up a ton of vinegar. I had around 4 aiptasia (one was about 3 inches in diameter because I fed it until I found out they were bad) on one of my rocks but there was a lot of stuff on this rock i didn't want to lose. So... I stabbed the little guy with the injector and started pumping. I did it to all of them. It has been 2-3 weeks and they haven't re-appeared and everything else is doing just fine. So I figure by trying the cheap method first and it worked I won that battle.

 

vingear does work. I had rice vingear handy and used that a few times.. I take the rocks out use the vingear and rinse off quickly and put back in tank. kalkwasser paste works to if you can get rock out of tank..

 

i wanted to avoid any type of chemical...vinegar or what not. at least for now. i have a gorgoian frag thats doing pretty well attached to the rock. and the rock sits next to my very large zoa colony and my frogspawn. thats why i wanted to at least give the peppermint a try. least "invasive" and i also get to add some diversity to the tank... kinda cool. ill try some other options if this doesn't work. its early enough that i think i can try some things kinda slow.

 

good luck, every peppermint shrimp (3 of them) I put in my tank gets eaten by my clowns.. nothing more enjoyable than watching a $10 dollar snack get eaten before it hits the substrate!

 

went to a new store today, didnt have any peppermint shrimp. did walk out with a montipora frag. pretty cool looking.

i might try and find somewhere online to order from. liveaquaria only has them listed together with other species

 

superpetz in annandale has the pepermint shrimps, you can tell because their little holder is the only one not over run with aptasia! its a shame because I was looking at a 6 line wrass and a rainfords blenny but I opted out when I saw all the aptasia in their tanks