Aiptasia Eaters!

[ramsey]

I ordered 5 and they're about $15 a piece. I placed my order Tuesday. I know he is going to have some ready at the end of this month but I'm not sure how many he'll have.

If you talk to Larry, he'll tell you that you don't want to solve the problem quick. Instead, you want it to take about 6 months. By doing this you have a good chance at having some nudi's survive. If they mow through the aiptasia to fast, they never reach maturity, you have another outbreak and then you have to buy more. Sounds reasonable to me. Also, he told me this after I was trying to buy 10 so I decided to try out 5.

You may want to talk to him and see what he can do but if it were up to me, I'd try 2-3 and see what happens. I have a 175g tank which is why I'm going with 5. If in 2-3 months I don't notice any improvement, I may buy more. I doubt I'll have to do this after talking to Larry though.

One more thing, they are pretty small and nocturnal for the most part so I wouldn't plan on getting them out of your tank and giving them to someone else. I think you'd be hard pressed to find them.

[FossilReef]

I'm battling the same thing at the moment. It's not terrible but it's time to do something. I ordered some Berghia nudibranches from berghia.net. I've heard that peppermints will only shred up the aiptasia to get to it's gastric cavity (?) and eat that. It won't eat the actual aiptasia and will cause it to spread. I've tried Aiptasia-X and I may as well have just feed them mysis. I think the nudi's are the way to go (from my reading) but there is a serious consideration. The diet of the nudi's consist of aiptasia. They don'y eat anything else. In other words, it's possible to get rid of the aiptasia and have all the nudi's die. I had a long talk with Larry (owner of berghia.net) and he said to start off with a small amount of them and give it about six months. This will allow them to reach maturity and possibly survive and combat subsequent outbreaks.

I have a post asking for feedback on the Berghia Nudi's but have yet to get any response. From what I've read, they seem like a winner but I've not had direct success using them (yet, HOPEFULLY!).

Let me tell you from recent experience that Berghia are monsters when it comes to eating Aiptasia. I just watched one plow through a 1/4" anemone in just about 30 seconds.

[GoneReefing]

I just tried the concentrated lemon juice method. I had two monsters. I don't know how well it works, but from what I read it works, as long as you don't over do it, it should affect my pH to much. We will see how it goes.

[grouch]

I had two outbreaks, the first one a peppermint shrimp cleaned up all but one then the shrimp vanished. Then the one Aiptasia left started to spread again. Purchased some 'Joe's Juice' from Big AL's online. Small 2 oz. bottle comes with small syringe. Feed a tiny bit to them they think it's food and they are dead in seconds. Coral only tank had no effect on the coral at all.
This stuff gets my vote.