My aiptasia solution!

[steve614]

I had a frag tank that became overrun with hundreds of aiptasia.they were stinging my corals and pretty much destroying my frags.I tried everything from lemon juice to joe's juice to berghia nudibranches to peppermint shrimp.with the injections they seemed to die but always came back even stronger.i put 4 peppermint shrimp in and the aiptasia ate them lol!no joke i actually saw the aiptasia eat my shrimp!I can't say for sure the berghias didn't work i don't think i gave it enough time but i ran out of patience and bought a file fish at the swap.I am happy to report that all my aiptasia is gone.I cant find even 1 in the tank.he hasn't touched any of my frags (zoas and LPS).i am passing him on to a fellow reefer with the same problem.i see that there are many others with the same problem and I figured I'd post what FINALLY worked for me.

 

[reefs4life]

congrats man, i need to get me one for my fuge

 

[LaurieC]

What kind of filefish?

 

[Wolverine57]

Matted Leatherjacket, there about $25-$30

 

[steve614]

yep matted filefish. i see them called bristle-tail filefish also. i paid 30 bucks for him at the swap

 

[bigdog1428]

Besides apastasia ,, way else does it eat ?


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[Wolverine57]

Besides apastasia ,, way else does it eat ?


Sent from my iPhone using Reefs

I have read that will pic on corals, and with caution is used because they will eat your shrimp...I also heard might pic on your anemeone (very slim).
Read many had great success with this filefish. When you see that your apastia is gone, take him out quickly.

 

[steve614]

hes eating mysis too

 

[BZOFIQ]

hmm, this sounds great, but how does one catch him when done with cleaning services. I have a 180G setup full of rocks, i feels i'd trap a lot more fish before I get this guy.

 

[tentacles]

They're a slow moving fish (of course when I had to get mine out I couldn't catch her and had to start pulling apart rocks :irked.

Use caution though, the reason I got rid of mine was because she was eating the skirts off zoanthids, ripping tentacles off my torch and nipping the bejesus out of my acans. Completely eradicated that aiptasia though, I removed her in July and haven't seen one since.

 

[steve614]

I think he goes for the aiptasia first and then corals are probably on the menu after that but this one didn't touch any of my corals.Even if he did IMO its more than worth it to get rid of those little aiptasia bastards!Ive been trying to get rid of them for 6 mos this guy destroyed them in a few weeks.I had a really bad outbreak, they completely dominated my tank.Everything i did to try to get rid of them made it worse..I'm just saying that it worked for me and figured I'd share in case anyone else was as frustrated as I was. I know there are alot of people because there were a few berghia group buys (I was in on one).It might work for you too...