Aiptasia in chaeto

[franx]

I got a ball of chaeto from reef cleaners a little over a week ago, and yesterday noticed this unwelcome guest. I managed to pull it out along with a bunch of the surrounding chaeto, but should just I be discarding the whole thing? Is it already too late?

 

[Lavey29]

I have them in my fuge to. I kill a few off in there periodically but aptasia are like ants. They just show up unexpectedly here and there and mess up your day.

 

[Stephen Glover]

It’s probably already too late. It’s almost impossible to prevent them unless you are willing to quarantine everything wet you add to your tank.

 

[franx]

C’est la vie, had to happen eventually I suppose. At least I might as well keep the rest of the chaeto! I’ll just keep my eyes peeled.

 

[Cole.mormon]

You can get a copper banded butterfly

 

[CoralB]

Peppermint shrimp

 

[franx]

So far I haven't noticed any that have managed to hold outside of the one I removed. Which is now living in a little plastic bin on my desk, just because I can, and has since split into 4 or 5 little guys.

 

[EricR]

If it were me, I'd scrap the whole ball and contact Reef Cleaners.
No idea what their policy is but if it's advertised as clean you'd think they'd replace it with an actual (allegedly) clean batch.

 

[AlgaeBarn]

In our research, peppermint shrimp usually do a great job at handling aiptasia.

 

[franx]

At this point, it's been about 6 weeks, so I'm not going to bother requesting anything from Reef Cleaners. But I was pretty unimpressed with that chaeto - other than this aiptasia, there were at least 1-2 other macroalgae species in there (small pieces) that I wasn't able to identify, a feather duster worm (not worried about that), some kind of red sponge, and some tiny jellyfish (I don't think hydroid because it's free swimming) that's also done well in my on-desk aiptasia bin.

Since @AlgaeBarn responded though, I might as well mention that I received some Ulva from them last week, and that was a very different experience - I went through it very carefully and didn't see anything other than healthy looking sea lettuce.

 

[floridareeflabs]

Hello,

Our recommendation is to always dip/soak your chaeto in RODI water for 5 min, then rinse and then dip again for another 5 min. This really helps remove any hitchhikers from Chaeto and the Chaeto can handle it very well. You have to be very careful who you buy Chaeto from, we would speculate 75% of the markets chaeto in the hobby world was sourced from someones home tank so you just NEVER know. Our chaeto is grown in a system that only has fish/snails/crabs and NO CORAL, no red worms, CLEAN. Just be careful, not everyone practices the same processes and it can be such a headache!!!!

 

[Jmp998]

Dipping is reasonable to reduce some other pests, but 5 minutes in RODI will do nothing for Aiptasia (unless it is boiling RODI).

 

[ninjamyst]

No stopping aiptasia....even if you think you got rid of them all, they show up again in a few months.

 

[floridareeflabs]

@Jmp998

Completely agree, this is why we said to dip 5 min and rinse and dip again. You are 100% correct but in the end if you dip chaeto long enough your chances increase and chaeto can handle it. We have seen Aptasia and just about every other hitchhiker fall off when dipping chaeto in rodi in our past lives before we started this business. In the end, you just never know, so be sure of the source. We have heard of hitchhikers from so many customers from so many sources (all the popular ones), and knowing their sources is key as well as dipping.

 

[Jmp998]

Florida Reef Labs-sorry if it sounded like I was picking on you, I just did not want people to misinterpret that a short RODI dip (or any of the common coral dips) would kill Aiptasia. If you are growing your Chaeto in a dedicated system, that is commendable and definitely a step in the right direction for avoiding unwanted pests. I would agree that it is likely a lot of the chaeto for sale commercially is just being pulled out of sumps, refugiums, etc and may have various unwanted pests.

 

[floridareeflabs]

@Jmp998

No worries, you’re obviously passionate about the hobby and so are we. Always good to ensure everyone is on the same page so no assumptions are made and negative results occur.