Removing aiptasia in an empty tank

zeromus-x

zeromus-x

Member
I'm in the middle of moving everything from my bowfront ~34gal tank to the 75gal at work. I've moved a good amount of my live rock but the tank at work has a small aiptasia problem. Not really a "problem" because there's no coral in there and the boss "likes having a few of them in the tank" (heh). We don't even have any enhanced lighting in there, they're just growing on their own. Anyway...
I'm going to be moving my tank up here to set it up in a different area of the showroom. When I do, I'm going to have a coral-only tank with the exception of maybe a clownfish eventually. It's just not big enough for what I want to do at home. That means essentially I'm going to have an empty tank to "play with".
Rather than use a syringe and poke/squirt the little

[hr]
to death, I'm figuring there must be a better way if I have absolutely no other livestock to worry about. I don't want to sabotage the tank for future use, but if I can get something to put in the water to massively kill 'em and then move the rocks back to the main tank, that would be GREAT. Or, worst case, flood it with peppermint shrimp until they take care of the problem themselves, but then I'm stuck with an abundance of peppermint shrimp.
A few of the anemones in the main tank are getting HUGE (a few inches I'd say when fully extended!), so I'm also worried the peppermint shrimp will simply run in fear.
Any opinions?
 
natclanwy

natclanwy

Active Member
Bergia Nudibranch (sp) I had a QT tank setup with these little guys in it and I just transfered my rock from my display to the QT and let these guys eat all the aptasia then I would rotate the rock. Worked great until I went out of town for work for a couple of months and my wife forgot to add top off water to my QT seems they don't like Hypersalinity much.
I started with 3 and within a couple of months I had at least a dozen and that many could completly clean a rock about twice the size of a softball that was completly covered with aptasia in about 2-3 weeks.
You could do the same thing since your tank is empty and you can leave them in there after you add coral with no ill effects except they will slowly die off if there is not enough aptasia to eat.
 
natclanwy

natclanwy

Active Member
Yes they can I was cleaning out some of the ones that were floating loose in my tank and I threw them in a small bucket that had some fresh water in it I left them in there until I finished cleaning my tank about a couple of hours then I topped of my QT with the bucket so the aptasia went in the tank and survived until the Bergia had lunch. Not sure how long they will survive in fresh water but if you go that route you may kill off all the creatures that live in and on the live rock and if you not concerned about that, its easier to just let the rock dry out then scrub dead stuff off and recure it.
Also will survive hypersalinity, after my bergia died off the aptasia that was on the rocks survived being in a 29gal that had evaporated half the water out of it for over a month before I put them back in my Display and killed them with joes juice.
 
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