One lone aptasia

[MyCatsDrool]

I have one aptasia I refuse to remove....

I don't really know why other than he is off in a corner alone, and i like to see him eat. He is clearish pink so when he eats I can see everything in him. It's kinda neat.


Am I a bad reef mommy for letting him stay?

 

[MT79]

Am I a bad reef mommy for letting him stay?

The problem is they multiply very fast, and have a fairly powerful sting. They can overwhelm a tank fairly quickly. Especially if you plan on adding coral.

 

[Lance M.]

I guess it is ok if there is only one and you can see it all the time (so you know when it spreads). But if/when it starts to multiply I would get rid of it because like MT79 said they can quickly become a problem if they are not controlled.

 

[melosu58]

Am I a bad reef mommy for letting him stay?

It all depends on whether you want a whole tank full of aptisia. As mentioned above they will grow out of control and sting and harm other corals.

 

[MyCatsDrool]

lol i am actually considering buying a little 2.5 gal tank to keep him in....just him of course.

 

[pipermurphy]

Why?

They are a pain in the butt. I had an outbreak when I was in Playa del Carmen and my neighbor was watching my tank. After the week and a half I came back to ~ 40 of them. Ater 2 bottles of Joe's Juice all was done. Have been pretty vigilant since then and no more outbraeks

 

[MT79]

lol i am actually considering buying a little 2.5 gal tank to keep him in....just him of course

I've saw that before. IMO each animal is interesting in it's own respect. Go for it!

 

[fishrfreinds]

Dont play with fire. Or in this case glass .

Really just remove it from your tank. Your going to have to remove the rock that it's on, because its contaimated. And its impossible to remove it from the rock. So go ahead have your nano devoted to the pain in the butt.

 

[mnestroy]

Question, I have some rock rubble in my sump with a pretty good sized aptasia on it.

How do they spread?

Should I nuke him, or is he not able to spread to the main tank?

(I figured if he CANT spread to main tank then hes prob doing some filter feeding which is good)

 

[MT79]

How do they spread?

Every way possible! Sexually and asexually. For example any tissue that remains after you remove the anemone manually, ie. cutting or ripping, can regenerate into a new organism.

Should I nuke him

Yes. It's probably best to nip it in the bud and be proactive. There's not much if any filtering benefits, pods will do the clean up job much better. HTH

 

[Lance M.]

mnestroy-

The best way to probably get rid of it (which you need to do) would be to use joe's juice. It works very well. What you do is turn off your pumps so the water is stagnant then use the syringe with joe's juice in it and feed it to the apstasia then like 10 minutes later suction the dissolved aptasia and you should be good. or if it's on rubble I guess u could take the rocks out and leave them outside in the sun or something for a day to kill them.

MyCatsDrool-

That's a pretty cool idea to set up a small tank just for it. It's like how some people set up small tanks to keep mantis shrimp.