Should I start over?

krouth · #1 11/03/2007, 11:57 PM

I have a 30g tank - 2 yrs old with lots of SPS and great growth. Unfortunately, I also have a LOT of aptaisia. I have tried Joe's Juice, lemon juice, boiling water, copperband butterfly (wouldn't eat - died), peppermint shrimp (disappeared) etc. with varying degrees of success, but the more I try the more they seem to come back - but in greater numbers!

I am wanting to move my tank to a different location in the house and was considering just taking all of the corals and putting them in a quarantine tank and then taking the live rock out and just letting it all die and starting over with "dead" rock.

Obviously, I am removing my main biological filter by doing this - but the aptaisia is really starting to take over.

Any other ideas or comments on my idea.... Thanks so much!

Kyle

cd77 · #2 11/04/2007, 12:18 AM

Have you tried Berghia?

krouth · #3 11/04/2007, 12:24 AM

I have not - but I have been on here reading about them. I do not want to kill off everything, but I am just going nuts! Are Berghia readily available at LFS's? If not, where should I look? Thanks for your suggestion!

spoon671 · #4 11/04/2007, 01:07 AM

www.berghia.net

spoon671 · #5 11/04/2007, 01:09 AM

www.saltyunderground.com/

cd77 · #6 11/04/2007, 10:47 AM

Yep, use one of those links above. They can take some time to work, so be patient with them. After all of your aiptasia are gone, the berghia will die off, and some people have posted here that their aiptasia come back -- so you may also want to keep manually killing with kalk paste, joe's juice, lemon juice etc. as soon as you see the first one appear after the Berghia have taken the majority out. A lot of people here have success with peppermint shrimp, so keep trying with them! Do you know why yours disappeared? Any chance you have a pistol shrimp in your tank? Limiting nutrients, stopping pumps/powerheads during feeding are two other things I've read as well.

CruzinKim · #7 11/04/2007, 10:59 AM

I've read that Kalk Paste is a sure thing, but if completely invested, you'll need to do an area at a time.

MarkGP · #8 11/04/2007, 05:27 PM

I myself have tried kalk paste, joes juice, lemon juice, and boiling water. All of these has worked to some extent but nothing totally successful. I just added 10 peppermint shrimp to see how that works. I think the next step will be berghias! After that, who knows!

krouth · #9 11/04/2007, 10:25 PM

Thanks for all of the advice! After reading all everything I could find here on Reef Central, I am going to try (again) the peppermint shrimp first and give them a month or two and see if I see the aptaisia population decreasing. If not, then on to the berghia. And I will keep going after the big guys with Joe's Juice. Thanks again for your replies!

Kyle

ccorpse27 · #10 11/04/2007, 10:36 PM

pep shrimps worked great in my tank. i tried everything i could find but the shrimp did the job.

spoon671 · #11 11/05/2007, 12:23 AM

Try one of your LFSs. It's "berr-jee-uh" BTW. I just found out today that my LFS has a ton of them.

yellowslayer13 · #12 11/05/2007, 01:43 AM

do the bergia reproduce and grow

cd77 · #13 11/05/2007, 08:39 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by yellowslayer13
do the bergia reproduce and grow

Yes, until they've exhausted their food source of-course.

spoon671 · #14 11/05/2007, 08:07 PM

Cool thing is, the ONLY thing they eat is Aptaisia! Period... or exclamation point in that case. Once their food supply runs out, they will die off.