Anemone's growing on my artificial reef?

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rambo1224

Aquarium Advice Apprentice
Joined
Sep 27, 2011
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I'm starting to get alot of these growing and attaching to my artificial reef. Can someone tell me what they are and if its good/bad to have them in the tank? Thanks!
 

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Those are aiptasia. Bad if you are gonna get corals. If you aren’t planning corals then they aren’t gonna do any harm to fish
 
Thanks. I did want to get some corals in there eventually. Is there something i can do to get rid of them?
 
You can get aiptasia x which you inject into them and kill them. They’re a pain in the butt and get out of hand quickly so I’d start killing them now. You can also inject them with lemon juice which is probably cheaper. Peppermint shrimp eat them as do Berghia nudibranchs but they’re expensive and tiny. Is the tank cycled? I’d try peppermints and injecting them if it were me.
 
Thanks... My tank is a cylinder so I can't really get to them to remove so I need something that will eat them. I'll try the shrimp
 
The natural predators of aiptasia are very hit or miss. I spent loads trying to manage them. I'd suggest pulling out the rock to work on it with aiptasia X before things get out of hand.
 
The natural predators of aiptasia are very hit or miss. I spent loads trying to manage them. I'd suggest pulling out the rock to work on it with aiptasia X before things get out of hand.
Unfortunately my artificial reef insert is permanent so no way to remove. I could get to some of them from the top to inject like suggested, but other I need to kill off naturally some how.
 
The best bet would be filefish...but with the size those are I'm not sure anything will go after them. I've never had any success with natural predators going after the larger aiptasia.
 
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