Aiptasia - treat or toss the rock

jfoahs04

Non-member
I’ve got a rock in my nano (13.5 Evo) that has 8 (that I’ve counted so far) Aiptasia anenomes. I’m debating trying to treat with Kalkwasser or even lemon juice (it’s worked for me in the past) just before the next water change.

The issue with these are that they’re deep in the crevices of the rock so it’s hard to get in there (even with a small syringe) and make sure I’m successful. If I pull the rock out to treat, they’re going to be harder to get to.

Since this is the only rock I see any Aiptasia on, I’m tempted to just toss it and replace it with more cured live rock. The problem is there’s a nice colony of zoas on the other end that I’d hate to lose. If you were in my shoes, what would you do?

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Any chance that you could take a pair of coral cutters and chip off the anemones? Alternatively, can you smack the rock with a hammer and keep the half with the zoanthids?
 
Any chance that you could take a pair of coral cutters and chip off the anemones? Alternatively, can you smack the rock with a hammer and keep the half with the zoanthids?
More likely the rock/hammer (or try to chisel out the section with the zoas) than coral cutters. It'd be a ton of work given their placement (deep in there) to try to chip off the sections with nems. I'm considering superglue gel over the holes as a first step and seeing if that works, then breaking off the zoa section and tossing the rest if it doesn't. At least visually, it appears the aiptasia is confined to the one section of the one rock right now and in such a small tank, I don't want to give them too much time to spread.
I would go with a peppermint shrimp.
I thought about this too, but I've heard that a number of different subspecies are sold as "peppermint shrimp" in stores and not all of them eat Aiptasia. I've never tried them in previous setups. Anyone know of an LFS near Boston that has actual Aiptasia eaters? If I went this route, I'd probably be offering up a free peppermint shrimp on this forum in a few weeks as I don't plan to keep one forever.
 
berghia nudibranch for me. I have a ton of aiptasia in my sump and it got spread to my display in days. Then I throw in 2 berghia nudi in my sump and 2 in my display. It clean them up really well and when there's no more aiptasia my nudi apparently die =[. Only thing is make sure you doesn't have any wrasses or else it will be a really expensive food for them lol.
 
berghia nudibranch for me. I have a ton of aiptasia in my sump and it got spread to my display in days. Then I throw in 2 berghia nudi in my sump and 2 in my display. It clean them up really well and when there's no more aiptasia my nudi apparently die =[. Only thing is make sure you doesn't have any wrasses or else it will be a really expensive food for them lol.
Ive heard they’re the best. Problem is, they don’t seem to be readily available around here.

The zoas are more problematic. If you decide to take it out and scrape, be careful with the zoas toxin.
I would throw it in the woods for a couple days. Then recycle the rock.
Would the toxin be an issue if I didn’t touch the zoas? My thought was just split the rock in the middle (hitting far enough away from the colony) so it wouldn’t be out of the water for more than a few minutes.
 
Would the toxin be an issue if I didn’t touch the zoas? My thought was just split the rock in the middle (hitting far enough away from the colony) so it wouldn’t be out of the water for more than a few minutes.
Some people put on eye protection and gloves when messing with zoas out of the water. It’s totally overkill, unless the zoa is one of the toxic varieties and happens to squirt you with toxic zoa juice that day…then it’s totally not overkill. :: shrug ::
 
I had some time today - pulled the rock broke off the end with the Zoas. I've got the rest of it sitting out back to kill everything else off. Problem (hopefully) solved.
 
I wanna grow one out
I did in my first system. Not intentionally, I thought it was a feather duster (this was before everyone was on forums talking about this stuff) and just let it grow. It grew to about 3.5 inches in length and a quarter size in diameter.
 
I did in my first system. Not intentionally, I thought it was a feather duster (this was before everyone was on forums talking about this stuff) and just let it grow. It grew to about 3.5 inches in length and a quarter size in diameter.
Saw a guy on you tube grow one took up whole tank. Lol.
 
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