Can I get to the anemone to be fully able to treat every bit of it?Ģ. Remember from above if we go to tackle an aiptasia and don't kill it all we stand a very good chance of simply encouraging more aiptasia to spring up.įor the above reason, the number main consideration when tackling aiptasia with spot treatments areġ. If the aiptasia are hard to get to or widespread a biological control is probably the best solution. Generally if there are just a few aiptasia in easy to access locations you will be best controlling using spot treatments. But, how do I control something that if I leave one cell of will just keep coming back? Okay so I'm going to be good and stay on top of this!! Similarly if we treat an aiptasia with a corrosive substance we stand the chance of only killing parts of it, leaving viable cell clusters which can become new aiptasia, effectively we have 'fragged the aiptasia! Each one of those slices undergoes cell differentiation now and grows a fresh new mushroom. We take the mushroom and slice it like a pizza into slices through it's foot.
Think of this like fragging a coral, let's say a discoma (mushroom). The remaining cells would be fragmented and each fragment then grew into a separate aiptasia via asexual reproduction. This started because an aquarist would treat an aiptasia chemically but not kill every least cell of it, which is very hard to do. The myth - treating aiptasia can cause them to explode releasing spores everywhere.
#Which peppermint shrimp eat aiptasia free
Once fertlised the zygote will develop into a free swimming planula lava which will then settle somewhere and grow into a new polyp. In sexual reprouction Individual aiptasia of distinct sexes will release male or female gametes into the water column, where fertilisation will occur.
Under some conditions aiptasia will reproduce sexually. These new aiptasia will be exact clones if the parent. These cells that detach to form a baby can either float off and start a new colony or simply stay attached to the rock where the anemone was and grow new anemones around the parent. A tiny fragment of cells detached itself from the pedal disk (read foot) of the anemone and forms a new distinct aiptasia. They can reproduce both sexually and asexually. Just how do they spread then? They seen to magically appear before my eyes!! There have been some reports of it killing nearby corals if you don't let it sit with the pumps off for at least 30 minutes, but I have not had that happen, and I have used it where the Aiptasia was coming up from a zoa colonies. I have used Frank's F-Aiptasia and it does seem to do a much better job of killing them and preventing spread like what I have had happen with Aiptasia X, Joe's Juice, or lemon juice. Using this product ultimately led to more of them popping up all over the tank.
I have also tried Aiptasia X with less than positive results. Once they have cleaned the rock they should be good to release into the display tank and will eventually hunt down and eat any Aiptasia they find. You can train other varieties of peppermints to eat the Aiptasia, but it requires a QT tank, some rock with it on it and refrain from feeding the shrimp until they get hungry enough and discover that Aiptasia as a food source. So finding a source that can guarantee you they are the Lysmata Wurdemanni species may be a bit of a challenge. The down side is being able to verify the species of peppermint and its origins as they all look very similar, if not nearly identical. This species regularly hunts Aiptasia in the wild and even tank raised will readily consume it. The one variety that will in most cases, actively hunt out Aiptasia effectively eradicating it from your tank is the Lysmata Wurdemanni species that originates from the Caribbean. This goes for tank bred/raised shrimp as well. While all of them do have the potential to hunt on and feed on Aiptasia, most of the varieties out there will not actively consume it as they have never encountered it in the wild. There are several varieties of peppermints sold in the hobby. An acquaintance of mine who is long on her way to getting a degree in marine biology gave me this tidbit of information on peppermint shrimp and eating Aiptasia.
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