What's the best/easiest way to rid my saltwater tank of an Aiptasia infestation?

Question

I'm faily new to the saltwater tank game and I bought some live rock with an little aiptasia animone hiding on it, and my mom is acctually the one taking care of the tank. I moved away to college and tanks this large aren't allowed at my place. Anyway, now my entire tank is covered in the things. I was going to try peppermint shrimp, but I have a yellow wrasse and apparently there is a pretty good chance he will eat them, and I tried a butterfly fish, but my tanks water apparently isn't in the best condition, so it died...I've heard you can use lemon juice and inject each plant individually, but there are so many Aiptasia in there such a task sounds pretty daunting, and wouldn't lemon juice seriously contaminate your water?

Answer 1

the peppermints will eat the samller ones, the larger ones they wont really touch, adding a few maybe 1 per 10-15g?? or so to keep new growth down. dont pull them out or add lemon juice, get elim-aspid, its a kalkawasser and a needle, inject a paste of kalk INTO the anenomes, you can also use pickling lime, same thing, livestock stores carry needles and syringes, get a 3cc syringe and a 14 or 16g needle, mix 3T of the kalk ina cup of water and squirt maybe .5 to 1cc into each anenome, they will turn black and fall off. copperbanded are hit or miss as are peppermints, two species are actually sold under the commen sname of peppermint shrimp, i cannot rember which one eats them, and if you have any corals peppermint may pick at zoas and a few others and they will eat those mini feather dusters, but once you get coral you dont really miss them as much, if the tank is COVERED and not just covered keep an eye on pH, alk and calcium levels, COVERED would be like 10-20 in a 10g tank, test the next day, dont worry to much but dont use more than 1/4 cup for a 55g or so. sorry i cannot be more helpful on how much to use before testing, but you can kill quite a few before you need to worry.

Answer 2

A peppermint shrimp (give it a few days to acclimate to start eating) will remove ALL Aiptasia from your tank. I've never had a problem with them eating the larger ones (they start with small ones though). Best of all, they won't hurt your fish, other inverts, bacteria or pH (since lemon juice is an acid, it would have this effect at the very least). If you get two, they'll often breed (they're hermaphrodites, so any two will be a pair). The babies usually become extra "food" for the fish, however. I've never kept a tank without at least one them.

The differences in success between mine and Pyro's may be due to how much you're feeding in the tank - if the shrimp have other options, they'll eat the same food as the fish, too. I keep my live rock in quarantine for a while with just the shrimp, so the Aiptasia is their primary food source.

Answer 3

My wrasse doesn't bother the peppermint shrimp at all. They are too big! Try some Joe's Juice.