What are people using for aptasia control in their reef?

[jah-hoeva]

I ordered one of them once. Thing showed up smaller than a cube of brine. It was so small my hob filter on my qt was too strong for it. Hopefully they send you one a bit bigger.

Eventually went to a copperband and never looked back.

 

[CAPSLOCK]

After my shrimp-eating PITA royal gramma died, I had great success with peppermint shrimp. 3 in a 75g, removed my entire collection of aiptasia including the scads of little tiny ones popping up out of everything (sand, back wall, etc). Haven't seen an aiptasia in months!

 

[JohnK]

Copperband butterflies are one of my favorite fish and I do feed well enough to keep one plump and growing. What’s an Aptasia?

 

[Andy V]

Well, after thinking about this for a while I drove out to Auburn and bought 3 berghia nudibranchs ($45 and 3 hours of my time) back in August. They acclimated nicely and disappeared into the rock work. 4-5 months later my tank has even more aptasia than before and these nudis have done nothing. Not a single aptasia has gone missing and in fact the number has doubled or tripled. I really don't have any significant nudi predators in the tank (yes, a few small hermit crabs), but it is hard to know for sure that they weren't eaten by something as I never see them.

Overall this experiment has been a complete bust - total waste of time and money.

For the next attempt I've been debating between a filefish and peppermint shrimp. My wife thought the filefish was cuter, so I ordered one of the ORA captive-bred matted filefish from LiveAquaria. Should arrive tomorrow, fingers crossed.

They very likely died before they got to do anything. They ONLY eat aiptasia so there really is no other explanation, unless what you were sold were not berghias - which is entirely possible.

Or another possibility is that your fish ate them...what do you have for fish?

My experience has been that they start to clear things out within a few days. How did you acclimate and how did you put them into the tank?

 

[JeanR]

Well, I bought and acclimated an ORA aptasia-eating filefish (from LiveAquaria). Within 20 minutes of acclimating/releasing I saw it go down to the sand and slurp up a baby aptasia, which gave me high hopes. Unfortunately I think that was the last one it ate as I've no more reduction in aptasia number. The filefish does, however, LOVE the frozen mysis/brine, white worms and baby brine that I feed daily. The filefish arrived tiny and has probably doubled in size in 3 weeks.

I just acclimated two ORA peppermint shrimp (also from LiveAquaria). Let's see if the combination of the filefish and the peppermint shrimps does any better.

One issue is that I have bunch of finicky eaters so I need to feed a lot to keep everyone healthy (2 blue stripe pipefish, 2 mandarins, 1 red scooter blenny are the finicky ones, the others are 1 flasher wrasse, 1 clown goby, 1 royal gramma, 1 court jester goby, 1 watchman goby, 1 orange-spot blenny, 1 cleaner shrimp, 1 pistol shrimp, 3 sexy shrimp). A pretty big bio-load for a 30gallon mixed reef but also lots of fun, the pipefish and mandarins are spawning regularly.

Will see how this experiment goes. I suspect the filefish and peppermints will eat aptasia if they are damn hungry (and don't have another choice) but will otherwise choose a tastier meal...

 

[gurumasta]

A pack of peppermint shrimp is the best solution in my opinion.. Like six of them.

 

[CoralJunkie]

I used peppermint shrimp a few years ago on an old tank. I tossed a few aiptasia in the bag while acclimating the shrimp and all 3 went for it so I figured they'd take care of the issue. Once the aiptasia were gone as far as the eye could see, they turned and ate my kryptonite candy canes. I seen them tearing the coral apart and seen glowing green chunks in their stomach. I made a bottle trap and eventually removed them. I know some will say they were probably camel shrimp or whatever but I know for a fact that they were peppermint shrimp. I did my research after hearing about different types of shrimp that could be mistaken for peppermints and they were in fact peppermints.

 

[Cpage101]

I just added 4 peppermint shrimp to my 120 and 99% of the aptasia is gone. in 2 weeks [emoji2957]


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[JeanR]

Well, anyone who knows Derek (AKA @gurumasta) knows he has a show quality tank and really knows his stuff. Based on his recommendation I added 4 more peppermints for a total of 6 (added them four days ago). Let's see...

 

[Cpage101]

Well, anyone who knows Derek (AKA @gurumasta) knows he has a show quality tank and really knows his stuff. Based on his recommendation I added 4 more peppermints for a total of 6 (added them four days ago). Let's see...

Yes Derek’s tank is very nice [emoji106]


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[tommy6905]

Since we’re on the topic aptasia and using peppermint shrimp as a defense. Any issue with adding them to a tank with a cleaner shrimp? Had my cleaner for awhile and don’t want him getting jumped

 

[Cpage101]

Since we’re on the topic aptasia and using peppermint shrimp as a defense. Any issue with adding them to a tank with a cleaner shrimp? Had my cleaner for awhile and don’t want him getting jumped

I added mine with a large coral banded shrimp so far so good


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[CAPSLOCK]

I watched a cleaner shrimp hunt down and eat a peppermint. On the same day I bought them, so maybe the cleaner was extra hungry? Of course, I removed the cleaner but then discovered I also had a royal gramma that devoured shrimp, so maybe they were just an extra tasty batch of peppermint shrimp...

 

[jasonrusso]

I bought 12 nudibranches from saltyunderground (free shipping over $75) and all visible aiptasia was gone in a few weeks.

 

[JeanR]

After all is said and done I think the peppermint shrimp were the best. They really just seem to spend all there time going over the rock work looking for things to nibble on. Unfortunately they mostly stay on one side of the tank - so there is more aptasia on the other side (which also makes me think the peppermint shrimp are doing more than the filefish which swims everywhere).

All-in-all the aptasia is definitely not completely gone, but much reduced and not spreading around my tank the way they were before.

And I don't see any evidence that the peppermint shrimp are eating any corals or other tank inhabitants.

 

[Jason_charlestown]

Since we’re on the topic aptasia and using peppermint shrimp as a defense. Any issue with adding them to a tank with a cleaner shrimp? Had my cleaner for awhile and don’t want him getting jumped

I have a hyperactive cleaner and 5 peppermint. The cleaner chases the peppermints whenever they get close, so they've learned to avoid him.