Aiptasia gone in 24 hours

[jodilynn]

My aiptasia that I had for a few months began to spread in epidemic proportions all of a sudden and was even growing on areas near some of my coral. Of course, my coral would get irritated and not open up like it should. After trying to pull out these pests with long tweezers (unsuccessfully) I decided to try the peppermint shrimp that one of my coral books said worked with mixed results. Therefor I decided to buy 3 of them and hopefully at least one of them would eat them. Within 24 hours my husband and I could not find ONE aiptasia, not even a little tiny one (which we had alot of). Just thought this may save some of you from the frustrations of trying to catch the slimy little things plus you don't have to tear apart your tank getting to them. Yea!!!!

 

[azonic]

I took a fellow reefers advice on this board...I took the piece of rock out of the tank which I had one growing on....and poured boiling hot water over the aiptasia..it is no more

 

[richard rendos]

I use peppermints myself. Seems like if you poor boiling water on live rock, it would kill off most or all the beneficial bacteria. I am sure it killed off the aiptasia, but seems like that method would do more harm than good.

 

[jakob4001]

for boiling method or chemical method (like using heavy kalk solution) you could put the water into a turkey baster & be more particular at what you are killing off...the heavy kalk solution should change the water composion where the aptasia are making it so it should die....however should aptasia be near a less hardy coral, you might want to use the peppermint shrimps...I have heard that in general they will not consume large aptasias though

 

[finland]

A few months ago I added 4 peppermint shrimp to my 150 to try to rid the tank of aptasia. In 3 days everyone was gone. Damn snowflake eel. I still had my aptasia and the snowflake had a full belly. Worse part about it, I knew it would happen, but thought,"Well, maybe...." Then I did the boiling water and syringe trick and put a serious dent in the aptasia population. Now they are starting to come back. Time to get the syringe out again.