aiptasia

[Semi newbie]

I am so bummed. I have to share my story with people who understand. As I said before I had no real life moving around in my tank in terms of pods and so I decided to add a new piece of live rock to see if I could get any critters out of it. For some reason all my live rock has a great deal of coralline growth but really no other diversity, it is just sterile. Anyway, I put the rock in and was psyched because I saw some worms and amphipods on it right away what I didn't see was the enemy lurking. I found it tonight when I was gazing a my beautiful tank!!! I put a Kalk paste on him and hopefully it will die die die but we will see. The reason I am bummed is because in the year the tank has been up and running I have not had one!!! Well I guess in a way I got what I wanted, diversity and life!!!!!! Thanks for listening......

[dmorel]

SN,
Aiptasia sucks, but it's not the end all of the world.
The trick to getting rid of them (ime) is to do so without causing too much friction with them.

Hot water mixed with WAY TOO MUCH kalk that is just soupy enough to get into a syringe seems to be a very effective method for getting rid of them. Just make sure you get the needle into the stalk of the thing.

Another good trick I learned from someone along the way is to take some putty, like the kind you might use to keep corals or rock in place, and litterally putty over the thing.
I have a piece of rock with sun coral growing on it that I had an aiptasia on, I used the putty method with much success.

Regards,

-david