Aiptasia on corals

[ILoveLlamas]

I volunteer at a local public aquarium (cold water), and we have had our one lonely tropical tank for a few years now. I have been put in charge of taking the whole thing down so that it can be made into a cold water tank once again. I need to take the corals to the store tomorrow, but this tank is plagued by aiptasia. PLAGUED. I mean we have hundreds upon hundreds, upon hundreds. I need to get 2 HUGE mushroom rocks, and 7in diam toadstool, and a huge green scolymia cleaned up fast. Any suggestions?

[on3ofak1nd]

There is no fast way to rid a system of aptasia unfortunately.
If you figure out a way to do it... you better take out a patent =P

[MMJ]

okay, so how do you get rid of them? I was told peppermint shrimp like to eat them and I also read that butterfly fish eat them (but they also eat coral - - not so good if you have live corals!!). I also know there are things you can buy (stop aiptasia). I could use some advise.

[machinas]

http://www.joesjuice.com/

I've never used it but I hear it works well, when I had an Aiptasia problem, I injected them with some kent turbo calcium which I dissolved in water and that worked great, I haven't seen any Aiptasia in over a year.

[ILoveLlamas]

I used Joes's Juice, but is scared the corals, and these need to go to the LFS ASAP. Plus, this problem is at the scale of like 15+bottles of Joe's Juice.

It would be great if there was some kind of dip I could use on the coral.

[machinas]

So, the lfs won't take the rock because its covered in Aiptasia?

[Icefire]

take a razor and remove them one by one

[KenStanley]

A few months ago I added another 35lbs or live rock that was apparently infested with aiptasias. The aiptasia's I have must be of the "extremely fast" variety. They retract into the live rock so fast there's no way I could cut them with a razor, so unless that was a joke....... I don't think it would be very effective for me.

Reef's Edge in Fort Lauderdale actually just sent out an email saying "Anyone having aiptasia problems??? I’ve got the cure; I just got a shipment in of aiptasia eating Peppermint shrimp. These shrimp are fed at Reef’s Edge a diet of nothing but aiptasia that we cultivate just for them. They immediately start eating aiptasia and will do the same in your aquarium!". So this weekend I'm going to get some and give it a try as well.

Here's what I've done and it seems works really well. I mix Kalkwasser into a very very strong concentrate and put it into a syringe. (I've been told that all Joe's Juice is, is Kalkwasser any how but I'm not 100% sure of that) Any how I turn off all the pumps and inject the Kalkwasser right into the aiptasia. Of course it immediately retracts but I follow him into the hole and continue to inject the Kalkwasser. Because the kalkwasser is so concentrated it kind of just lays there, filling the hole in the rock. I generally wait about 5-10 minutes and then turn the pumps back on. When the circulation comes back on be careful not to allow the Kalkwasser concentrate to come in contact with your corals. You may also need to put an air tube on the syringe so you can reach the more difficult places.

The ones I've treated this way have all died so this has worked very well for me but the problem is unless you are able to get every one of them the remaining ones just seem to propagate and before you know it there are more of them.

You certainly do not want to go crazy with the Kalkwasser mix. It really doesn't take much if you can get it right on them and in their hole. Good luck and be careful with the Kalkwasser.