Berghia slugs wanted

[Frizz]

I have a serious atapasia problem & am desparately seeking one ore more berghias. I would love to buy locally if possible.
Thanks!,
Frizz

[mx_tang]

I can't help you with the nudibranch, but have you tried peppermint shrimp, a copperband butterfly, or other manual extraction techniques?

How bad is the Aptasia outbreak?

[mx_tang]

<img src="/images/welcome.gif" width="500" height="62"><br><b><i><big><big>To Reef Central</b></i></big></big>

I forgot to mention that in the previous post and welcome to the FRAG forum!

[Frizz]

Haven't tried any of those things. I read somewhere that the shrimp only eat them as a last resort. Is this not true? Wouldn't the butterfly annoy corals & tube worms?
The outbreak is huge. The problem is on the live rock. They sink into the crevices & act like a piece of mucus when I try to extract them. removing them from the sides of the tank or the macro algae is no big deal.My bubble coral is getting P.O.ed about them.
I bought some stuff to kill them but honestly have been afraid to try it.
Frizz

[JHardman]

If you can remove the rock...

Boil some water and use a syringe from a test kit and squirt the anemone until it more or less melts away. Scrape off anything that doesn't melt and squirt some more boiling water on that spot. The caveat is that you need to try to avoid getting boiling water on the rest of the rock as the boiling water is going to kill anything that it touches.

Also, you really need to be careful trying to remove them. One of the ways they reproduce is by petal laceation. So when you scrape them off something, all you are doing is helping them spread faster. All it takes is one live cell left behind...

If you can't remove the rock...

There are several removal methods that work to one extent or another. Boiling water injected into them works. Kalk injection works, same with vinegar. These tend to take time and you may not get them on the first try.

A CCB would work too, but only the big ones tend eat the anemones. They are notorious for not eating prepared foods and wasting away.

Peppermint shrimp will work too. But you need big shrimp and you need to more or less starve the shrimp to encourage them to the anemones.

As a last resort... You can remove each rock one by one and dip the whole rock in boiling water. But the problem with this is that it will kill all of the life in the rock, including the filtration capabilities of the rock. You would have to do this slowly allowing time for each now dead rock to recover and be able to filter again. In that time period it could well get infested again. If you have another established tank you could put each rock in it for recovery. Definitely not the best solution...