Aptasia

[Sharkey18]

I use an aphasia eating file fish. 

 

I just put him back in the display again today.  He's easy to catch for when I want to pull him in case he is munching on polyps. I keep him in a back tank until I see some significant aphasia, then in he goes for a week or two. 

[Djplus1]

I actually meant wurdemanni in my last rant. I copied  and pasted from Live aquaria, but those obviously are fine too. Just not the pacific version.

[Djplus1]

I use an aphasia eating file fish. 

 

I just put him back in the display again today.  He's easy to catch for when I want to pull him in case he is munching on polyps. I keep him in a back tank until I see some significant aphasia, then in he goes for a week or two. 

Are they easy to catch? I wanted to try one, but I fear tearing my rank apart to remove a rogue fish.

[morgan175]

I don't have a file fish but I heard they were slow.

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Sharkey18]

They aren't slow when you are trying to catch them! They generally move very slowly, (all the better to sneak up on aptasia) however they can move quite quickly when they want /need to. 

 

I don't know if mine shows typical behavior, but I've been able to catch him because at night he tends to sleep at the top of the water column in a corner. I just slowly put in a net and grab it. I've done this at least 3 times now. There may come a day when it gets wise and doesn't sleep out anymore but for now it's been working. I also have a lot fewer zoas than i had before so I'm not really worried. 

[Dtip]

Had one a long time ago that did seem to pick and poke at my frogspawn from time to time and then retreat but never really did any damage I could see.  I don't think they have the stomach to take on something smaller than they are unless they feel like they have superiority in numbers.  

[Sharkey18]

36 hours after adding the file fish all my visible aptasia are gone. There were at least 5 large visible aptasia, and now i can't see any. I'm going to keep him in the tank for a week or two and let him do his thing. 

 

I did see him nipping at some zoas yesterday, but they were zoas that were already struggling and had a lot of feather dusters that he might have been picking at. Im going to see how they do over the next few days. The larger plays don't seem to be affected. 

[s2nhle]

good to know. I may get one for my dt.

[FirstContact]

I've had no luck with peppermints they never seen to eat them :(.

A copperband will not be going in my tank lol. Way too much money in palys.

I'm thinking about nudabranch anybody have any luck

Had great results with Berghia Nudibranches. You can get them online from salty underground.com. They work much better than CBB or kalk, although after Berghias, I think kalk is the best economical solution.

[Sharkey18]

Update: my file fish seems to be picking at my gorgonians and my dendro polyps so he might be heading back to a behind the scenes tank soon. 

 

use with caution! 

[AlanM]

So far I've tried majano wand, which worked only temporarily, Aiptasia X, which worked temporarily, peppermint shrimps "guaranteed" to be the ones that eat aiptasia, which didn't seem to do much except gradually disappear one by one despite putting a bunch in, and homemade kalk paste which did nothing except raise pH for a while.  My rock is very feature-rich and the aiptasia all have their feet down in the crevices which precludes physical removal. 

 

I may order some berghia nudibranch from Salty Underground which seems to specialize in them.  Maybe if I order a few we can keep them moving around the club to keep them alive.  They apparently need to eat aiptasia at least every 5 days or they die.  That site doesn't recommend them if you have 8 or fewer aiptasia, apparently.

[Kevnjeep]

Also I Hurd from a buddy of mine that you need to take rocks out with aptasia on them and put them in a separate area until they get big enough because the ones you get are the size of a grain of rice. Idk if this is true. It's just what I hurd

[Dtip]

Yeah, also heard that berghia supposedly do their thing much more efficiently if you can remove a rock at a time to a smaller system with much lower flow, and let them wipe things clean a rock at a time. That way they don't spend hours and hours hunting around in the middle of nowhere or risk getting blown around, wasting more time. Though the way Aptasia spread, you'd think that they'd regrow on the treated rocks before all of the rocks could be treated. 

 

Regardless, it's a really good idea to create a trading ring for them so they aren't just doomed (though, obviously, if they start reproducing, most of the offspring aren't going to make it anyhow).

 

It's definitely not a myth that peppermints will eat the buggers as I've seen the results.  But it does seem to be hit or miss, especially if they have other food sources: if the one I had hadn't died I'd be more than happy to lend or give him away.  I think my tank just wasn't fed often or messily enough at the time (didn't have any fish so just tried to spot feed him/her).

Edited April 28, 2014 by Dtip

[morgan175]

Not sure if my shrimp are alive or not but thinking of getting these just to try. They have the high flow type which I think I'm going with. Figure 3. Would like to hear from someone that actually tried them and had success.

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Sharkey18]

Removed the file fish today. Definitely easiest fish to catch. Was in there for about 2.5 weeks. 

[WheresTheReef]

Luckily I have only had a few aptasia pop up. I killed them off by injecting boiling water with a needle. I was able to get them even when they retracted into the rock. Haven't seen them since.

[AlanM]

Removed the file fish today. Definitely easiest fish to catch. Was in there for about 2.5 weeks. 

 

Did it eat the aiptasia?

[Der ABT]

here is my experience with Nudi's

http://wamas.org/forums/topic/41948-got-babies-berghai-nudibranchwoohoo/

 

Dont have them anymore but breeding was actually kinda fun...i just suggest getting a small tank full of aptasia to feed them first. and as long as yuor patient it worked pretty well.

 

I still feel manual removal is the best way...ensuring you get as much of the base as possible (tweezers were my tool of choice) ....

 

for kalk to work you really have to almost make a putty out of it and let it sit for hours not just 10-15 min with no flow.

 

Ive seen filefish do miracles but again they go after other stuff as well (ive heard zoas taste good to them)

 

Peppermints, never worked for me regardless of number....probably found enough food to eat....others have had good success.

 

hope this helps

[Sharkey18]

Oh yeah, It ate all the visible aptasia within a few days. I left it in for a while longer to make sure. 

 

My problem is that I have aptasia in my tiny little glass holes overflow boxes so unless i remove them and clean them out I will always have them.