Aiptasia infestation - worth breaking qt over?

tkh

tkh

New member
Ok, so here's my dilemma. My tank was formerly a fish only under its previous owner. He had used a raccoon faced butterfly to control and mostly eradicate his aiptasia problem.

Having removed the raccoon faced butterfly due to the tank also having a crypto infestation, and my desire to have a reef tank, I now have a rapidly growing aiptasia problem. My question is should I break my quarantine (to rid the tank of crypto) and reset it to introduce a couple of peppermints, or should I wait it out and just manually attack the larger aiptasias? I have another 7 weeks of quarantine ahead of me (doing 10 week total qt).

Current tank residents are:
Coral frags: some acros, a few zoos, plays, montipora, sympodium, ricordeas, St. Thomas mushroom, blue gorgon, gsp, blasto, pineapple coral, acan, candy cane, toadstool, devils hand (yes,it's a mish-mash, looking to refine it post-qt)

Coral colonies: small frogspawn, large multi-mouthed plate coral

Other: filter feeding sea cucumber, sunburst bta, 3 skunk cleaner shrimp, orange linkia, and a varied CUC.

The main reason I am concerned is that I don't want it so widespread that it is beyond repair, and I am worried about one of my zoa frags... Found two right next to it, and the frag has been closed for two days now :( I'm not sure if its due to the aiptasia or some other allopathic warfare (frogspawn would be my only guess, but it was a good 1.5 ft away..., everything else close is relatively peaceful)
 
If I'm not mistaken, you don't need to worry about inverts doing your fallow period, so having peppermint shrimp won't affect the fallow period since ich doesn't affect them.
 
yogoshio said:
If I'm not mistaken, you don't need to worry about inverts doing your fallow period, so having peppermint shrimp won't affect the fallow period since ich doesn't affect them.
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You are correct in that crypto does not affect inverts, but the theory behind a full QT is that they can be unwitting carriers of the eggs via the water they absorb or from whatever amount of store water might make it past the acclimation period. The likelihood is probably next to none, but after dealing with crypt, I want tube 100% sure it's gone! Essentially, you guarantee no further infection by introducing zero possibility of any external source.

Peppermints it is then! And back to week 1 :( hmmm, maybe I'll buy some coral too then, lol...
 
get the wand and fry those suckers! if you interested in a majano wand let me know and i should be able to get you in contact with a person. otherwise peppermint shrimp from the caribbean or the aiptasia eating fish would be a good bet. Just as a side note the shrimp wont eat big ones so try to shrink or kill those by hand first.
 
yogoshio said:
The wand and aptasia x will kill whichever ones you can find. Peppermints will find ALL of them and eat them till they're gone.
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Not all peppermints. I had 10 in my frag tank... No dice... Then got berghia ... 6... All gone within week
 
The type of peppermint does make a difference, as certain peppermint species don't go after it, so I'm hoping mine work out! Added 3 (because I worry that 5 will mean too many shrimp, between them and my cleaners, but in an empty tank like it is now, they probably would have been ok), so hoping they go after the stuff! So far, they are in hiding, as expected.

I've got aiptasia x on hand for the monstrous ones, but most of these aiptasias are in hard to reach spots, or mostly out of view... oh well, I have some if need be!

On the plus side, I now have a beatiful favia frag, monti colony, black sun coral, and red St. Thomas mushroom! Now to wait 10 weeks.. :(
 
tkh said:
The type of peppermint does make a difference, as certain peppermint species don't go after it, so I'm hoping mine work out! Added 3 (because I worry that 5 will mean too many shrimp, between them and my cleaners, but in an empty tank like it is now, they probably would have been ok), so hoping they go after the stuff! So far, they are in hiding, as expected.

I've got aiptasia x on hand for the monstrous ones, but most of these aiptasias are in hard to reach spots, or mostly out of view... oh well, I have some if need be!

On the plus side, I now have a beatiful favia frag, monti colony, black sun coral, and red St. Thomas mushroom! Now to wait 10 weeks.. :(
Click to expand...

Shrimps add very little bio load. I have about 10 peppermints. I have a ton of aiptasia in my sump but only one in my display tank that I can see. The one in my display has gotten very large and my peps don't go for it. I got my peps from reeftopia.com and they guarantee that their peps will eat aiptasia. I agree with them.
 
Wasn't so worried about their bioload so much as them all finding a home/territory and not fighting too much. Went overly conservative, but I hope they keep the aiptasias in check!
 
I had an emerald crab and he took care of my aiptasia. I don't know if it is very common for them to eat aiptasia but mine did for some reason.
 
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