My Racoon Bfly Ate EVERY Aiptasia

[jamesw]

Hi guys,

I had a HUGE aiptasia problem last month that has been building for a while. They were covering every rock and starting to sting my corals and kill them.

I was beyond the point of kalking them and they were too big for peps to eat.

So I got a healthy racoon butterfly from my lfs and acclimated him in a breeders net in my reeftank. When I let him out after a day or two, the first thing he did was swim to the bottom and eat an aiptasia off the sandbed!!!

Now he has eaten them all - I mean I can't see an aiptasia in my tank. He has also eaten all of my feather dusters - they are the "collateral damage." But I am happy. If I had to estimate, I'd say he has eaten about 400 aiptasia in 3 weeks.

Not sure weather to keep him or not now as he is probably picking on my SPS - the polyps have stopped coming out.

Just thought I'd share with you all.

Cheers
James

 

[Veng68]

Was it a Red Sea variety or a Hawaiian variety of Racoon?

I say keep him, but in a separate tank. I had a Racoon for about 6 years before he kicked the bucket so to speak (damn sticky heater).

Cheers,
Veng68

 

[danmhippo]

Thank you for sharing that James. Can you take a pic of your butterfly?

Also, for your next task, go find a sure fire way of getting rid of flatworms. :wink:

 

[EEreefer]

Yep. Wrote about this "phenom" a few times already in response to questions. Mine was an adult Red Sea variety and I did return him to the LFS, but..... I now have a small one in my 150 gal. sump/refugium and cycle any rocks that the pest show on and he wipes them clean :lol: They most certainly will wipe out dusters and the large one wanted my mushroom rock in the worst way so I pulled it out while he worked and used it as bait when I needed to catch him :twisted: .