Aiptasia has been hard for me to control too. Chemicals take up too much time. Peppermint shrimp ate my corals in my bio cube, so I avoided them for a long time. I use to add berghia 1-2 times a year, but my timor wrasses liked to eat them. More than my 6 line and yellow coris, so nudis aren’t an option anymore. I tried a copper band, but my yellow tang bullied it to death. I finally gave up and added 12 peppermint to my 170 gallon. I put the ones that were eating coral in the sump and left the good ones in the tank. I haven’t seen anymore aiptasia!
Love tidal gardens , but this is nonsense seems more like a paid advertising. Btw im also dealing with a unwinnable battle with aiptasia in my reef tank is like a 50 gallon and I estimate i have around 400 aiptasias if they are no more
Youve missed a couple of other options there. Syringe with lemon juice or vinegar which was a previous preference for attacking them but now my no.1 attack is boiling hot water in a syringe. Fill a cup with the water and just keep refilling and attacking. They melt instantly and it gets right down into porous rock.
If they feel threatened, one of their defence mechanisms is to implode into a heap of babies, that's what Aipstasia X is known to trigger as well, best method is Nudibranch, they specifically target Aipstasia then once there is none left they starve to death and remove themselves, there's also Joes Juice and F-Aipstasia.
Great vid guys… interested to know how long you gave the nudis ? I put 6 in a 100gallon with the same wrasses and it obliterated aips… it took 10 weeks though.
So instead of just getting rid of the leopard wrasse and using the nudibranchs you got rid of the orange shoulder and got a copper and that doesn’t eat?
In our 300g tank we had an outbreak as bad as Becka’s. Berghia (from Reeftown) worked for us but we think the critical factor was planting the recommended number of Berghia per gallon - 1 for every 10 gallons. We planted several per area of rock so they could breed. Giving them friends to party with and time to make babies finally wiped out our aiptasia explosion. Berghia are expensive - but what isn’t in this hobby?
Thanks for this new entertaining episode! I'm glad Reef Delete worked in your very open rock work. It did not work for me because I could not reach in crevices and under corals. The device is so heavy and you have to press the button so hard to be sure it is on you can easily break corals. Also my arms are not long enough. Why place the LED under the thumb, why not mount it on a stick?🤦♂️ At £300 I'll wait for a device with a better design.
Hey there, I am from Bangladesh and I am 14 years old. I will be setting up a 5 foot peninsula reef tank in a while. I will have a bio load on the heavier side with four tangs and smaller fish and I want it to be a mixed reef tank with some SPS corals. I was suggested to use the SeaTorch LM25 reef lights for the tank. He told me two units will be enough for the tank. I could not really find a lot of information on them, so I was wondering if they are any good or not. Will they grow corals and will they thrive? Will it look good and is it controllable? Could you please tell me? It would be of great help if you can. I plan on using a bubble magus curve 9 elite for the tank.
I breed berghia. Tanks with wrasse i always reccomend starting with more then a tank without one. With that your size i would have went with 8 to 10 berghia. I live in Indiana and would be willing to send you some for a great price if ever interested. I don't typically ship but I'm sure you could give me some pointers ha
Always wondered about breeding those. Do you need to have separate tanks to grow aiptasia in to give them a constant food supply? I hear all the time they will eat a tank clean of aiptasia and starve if you don't introduce new food for them.
Nudi cleared out my tank within 2 weeks. Haven't seen any aptasia in years. I would use the cheapest pair of flush cutters (wire cutters) you can find to clip the base of the vermetid snails. When you get near them they retract into their spiral base and when you clip the base you kill the snail, you also remove the poop looking homes they create. Keep in mind killing them will pollute your water just like anything else dying. Can easily remove all of the snails you can see/reach and leave the rest up to some bumble bee snails.
Glad my copperband is doing an excellent job. Had him for over a year now and never seen an aiptasia since I introduced him. I also feed him a lot of vitamin enriched frozen (mysis and brine) he is super fat and healthy. A true warrior. I did wait more than a year to add him as I wanted a mature tank just incase he wouldnt take frozen so there was plenty of critters to munch on. My powder blue chases him around once in a while but no real aggression (good powder blue :) ) I would only recommend if you love the copperband and plan on keeping one for the long run even if he doesnt touch aiptasia. These guys goes through so much stress getting to your tank, the least one can do is keep him safe. Very beautiful fish. Am I lucky, of course but would have never had the luck without trying once. He is super chill, kinda living in his own world. I find him super interesting, always looking everywhere under the rocks, scanning every area for potential food. Love him. My precious ;)
Aiptasia can be very easy to get rid of. Take kalkwasser powder and mix it with a small amount of saltwater from your tank. Make it a really thick paste but thin anough to be sucked into a diabetic syringe. Use the syringe to inject the kalkwasser paste directly into the aiptasia and fill the cavity that it's growing in. I promise that this works. I've done it on several tanks and it's worked every time. But you need to get every single aiptasia or they will come back. Repeat this till they are gone. Watch water parameters while you do this. Hasn't caused any problems for me. But still. Watch the parameters.
Wow that thing works the difference is Night & Day in the side by side comparison. I used go crazy trying to kill them things,I'd get a long sewing needle and try to stab when open and rip it out 😔 I did a great job spreading it is about it.🙄 Wish I had this Lazer its awsome. You can add a Tang now that the CB butterfly is comfortable. A Chocolate Mimic Tang my favorite.🐟💜😊
There is 1 (one) aiptasia in my tank that keeps coming up every few weeks. It is like wack a mole trying to get rid of it. I have use super glue, a siphon, and even removed the rock entirely and fragged it off. I fully expect it to return in a week or so.
Me and 2 friends have been sharing a file fish. The one tank was overrun with aiptasia a month later cleaned house. We rotate him because it likes go after the hermits when all the aiptasia is gone.
Use a really thick kalkwasser mix. You'll see them melt away. I used it on mine, granted, I didn't have a total take over more like 5 or 6? It takes so little as well, it doesn't alter water chemistry
Pepermints work 100% of the time. 100%. But you have to put several in. Minimum 4 Id say. It'll take them a week or 2 and you'll notice no more apthesia. A wrasse will probably delay that longer.
excellent video. You covered every type of method. i am dying to see if they come back in the next month. isn't that reef delete thing like £250 though!! ouch! definitely a downside. i just bought a molly miller for this and algae eating. it ate nothing and died after 5 weeks lol :(
Years ago I had a biocube filled with aiptasia and killed some with the Majano Wand. It could only be used so much per day, and I had hundreds. I ended up just starting over with new sand and rock.
Tank is looking great. I, too, have some pesky aptasia in my tank. I have copper band in quarantine. I will transfer it to the display tank in a couple more weeks. I watched a video on the Majano Wand. It uses a small electrical charge to burn the aptasia from the inside out. I used a laser in the past that worked very well. I could adjust the focuse of the beam which allowed me to zap aptasia deeper/further into my tank. Mark Levinson (aka Melevsreef) has a few videos on youtube. I lent it out and it came back damaged. Poop happens. My tank is 24x24x48. At 6'3, I do sometimes have a hard time reaching some areas of the tank. For me the UV may not work. Anyways, please keep us updated on how well the UV light works on the aptasia.
Hi. I have been in the same situation and there is one more fish which can control aiptasia and it worked for me. Its called "Acreichthys tomentosus". Do some research on that one.... and maybe have a go....
Always add 3 or more Peps (especially for large Aips) & continue to hit them daily your self Aip X or wherever you prefer to use. Never failed me in 17 years.
We've been putting bumblebee snails into the tanks and breaking them off and siphoning them up when doing maintenance. Ironically the tanks with vermetids stay cleaner than the ones we clean the most aggressively. I just don't like getting poked when scraping the glass so we remove as many as we can.
I have berghia nudibranchs and a silver belly wrasse in my 100g and they have been living together for 6 months now - I’m sure some have been a snack but I think they are also breeding in there. Also I notice the nudis tend to be most active at night when my wrasse is sleeping
Chelmon rostratus is by far the best way to control Aiptasia. To use chemical like concentrated Kalk you have to inject it inside the Aiptasia through the oral disc using a needle you cant just put over the Aiptasia. Using vinegar works as well but in small amounts because of pH drop.
My 75 gallon reef was loaded with aiptasia from the rock I was given. I got a small file fish. In 4 days the entire tank was clean. Never seen one since and the file fish eats what I feed the rest of the with no issues.
Becks please do make a follow up video on this death ray, I can’t help my snake 🐍 oil senses going into high alert 🚨. I have been battling Aiptasia for some time and give up for a while and try again at a later time basically rollercoaster affect.
I feel ya! Im in an aiptasia outbreak now and its honestly depressing. Added 3 peppermint shrimp, added a filefish, used kalk wasser, I just cant seem to get them under control.
I used peppermints , worked quite fine. But you have to keep them hungry. Reduced feeding. And you need about 1 shrimp per 30 gallons. Now im aiptasa free since 2019. And never use copperband in an aiptasa infested Tank, If a copperband eats an aiptasa the fish dies.
I usually have broken down my reef tanks once I have too many almost impossible to get rid of them.. I literally will break down my entire systems.. Starting up fresh is best dried rock I understand always possible to get them again unfortunately. But I had systems with zero aptasia.
You messed up with the nudi’s. They are nocturnal so you put them in with the lights off and the wrasse is asleep. Then the nudis hide when the wrasse is about.
In our experience, file fish may prevent an aiptasia infestation but won’t clean one up. We had a file fish in our 300g tank and almost no aiptasia. The file fish died and within a month we had an explosion of aiptasia. Coincidence? Who knows.
I LOVE AIPTASIA ! I have 2 beautiful saltwater aquariums (55's) but with no live coral (I have totally realistic synthetic corals from a company in Florida). I get aiptasia from any fish store for free which makes a gorgeous addition to my artificial reef tank (making it look that much more realistic). And there's never been any problems with my damselfish, clowns or invertebrates. 😁👍🏻
$80 worth of Berghia will solve all aiptasia problems in any tank up to maybe 100-200 gallons. I don't know why people freak out about it. Its a very easy solution. IMO vermetid snails are infinitely worse.
I thought my Berghia's got eaten as well. I didn't see any of them for 6+ weeks. And then all of a sudden they were everywhere and destroyed all my aiptasia. I have not seen a single aiptasia polyp in 1.5 years now.
What you need to do it remove your fish. Then add half a dozen peppermint shrimp and do not feed them. They will decimate the aptasia in a couple of nights.
@@tidalgardens I cant see that laser being a sustainable solution or a final solution. I would imagine there are several you cant get to which will make eradication impossible with this method
Want a coral to grow? Get you parameters right, master flow and lighting. Coral still dies or just doesn't do great. Want to kill aiptasia? Burn it with chemicals and cover it with puddy blocking out all light and nutrients. It still might grow. Welcome to crazy town. 😂
The best practice is to not get Aiptaisa in your display tank, to begin with. Hence why an advanced quarantine protocol is important. Prevention is cheaper than cure.
