Aiptasia - An Unwanted Tenant?
6 April 2007With the new 65W 24″ now perched on top of the new glass top for my 20L Perfecto tank, things are really starting to grow.
I picked these up a few days ago, along with three new blue legged hermits and three new turbo snails.
The total livestock in the tank is now:
5 Blue Legged hermit crabs
1 Scarlet Legged hermit crab
5 Turbo Snails
…and one small sea anenome.
It apparently hitchhiked his way along with the live rock. At first, I was excited to see this. How cool! But as I looked around a bit to find out what kind it is, nobody has anything good to say about this creature.
I can’t get a good picture of it. It has milky-translucent tentacles, only 4 or 5 of them, all in a circle around the center. It is tucked pretty well into the rock, so I can’t see it’s body very well, but it looks like it has more much smaller tentacles in closer to it’s body. The long tentacles are perhaps a centimeter long and maybe 0.5mm in diameter at the base and taper to a point.
From my research, it seems I’ve got an Aiptasia, or “glass anenome”. The concensus is that they’re a pest and can spread and take over, eating other livestock. They don’t need much light, though I’ve given it plenty now.
How to remove Aiptasia
Advice from a number of online resources suggest that physical removal is a fool’s errand and often results in helping them reproduce by breaking them up.
Sending in troops to eat them seems to be the best approach. There are a few natural predators for this anenome. Nudibranches apparently eat nothing but these anenome and would probably do the trick nicely, until the food is gone, of course. Hairy Red-legged hermit crabs like to eat these as well, as do peppermint shrimp.
Another option is chemicals — creating a paste of potent calcium or sodium hydroxide can do the trick.
I’d rather not disturb the balance of my tank since it’s quite small. I’ll see if the current hermits do anything, and if not, throw in one of the more “specialized” spieces/hit-men to deal with it.
There is some great reading on the subject at WetWebMedia.com
on April 20th, 2007 at 6:43 pm
I would recommend that you rid your aquarium of these now and not to hang around and wait.
Aiptasia can quickly grow to plague like proportions and are then very hard to remove.
You can use various methods to remove these from your aquarium. You can use hot water mixed with vinegar in a needle and inject it into the centre of the aiptasia. You can use calcium hydroxide and do the same as the water. You could even remove the rock from the aquarium and scrub it clean.
The best one I have found is one called Joe’s Juice. This is a paste like substance which you spray into the aiptasia and it literally disappears before your eyes.
Whatever you decide to do - get rid of it!
on April 20th, 2007 at 9:14 pm
Thanks for the feedback (here and on the other posts), Peter.
Fortunately, the peppermint shrimp took care of the aiptasia very quickly.
on April 25th, 2007 at 12:00 pm
[...] written in the past about the Aiptasia or Glass Anemone that came along with m live [...]
on November 13th, 2007 at 11:43 pm
Berghia Nudibranchs can work but your better off breeding the nudi’s in a small tank and feed them aips from your main tank. Then as they spawn, move nudi’s into your display. This makes it so you have a growing population of Nudi’s.
More info on aiptasia here:
http://www.reefbuzz.com/modules.php?name=Forums&file=viewtopic&t=118&highlight=aiptasia