I don't want any common methods advised in this thread, they don't work and we want only atypical methods advised here this isn't a common work thread its a unique one. I don't want to argue with anyone about methods in my own threads, alternate takes can easily start their own aiptasia thread
Mwatts so sorry to miss your message sent i don't usually do that, there's been tons of drama threads/ arguments/ distracting me lately here and it's really taken my focus away from my friends who just want to do good on the site and solve friendly problems.
SWiiliams thank you so much brother for the kind words am so glad a $ tank like that was helped with deep surgical cleaning you did the job really thorough to have them comply in one pass that's for sure, I'm not always that lucky in dinos battles they're the top scourge in reefing
@Mwatts12
Mwatts just like all 40 pages of this thread are completely opposite rules for cycling compared to any read you can find or sample from a cycling article, the same goes for aiptasia
There's a common path people tell each other to take (animals, injections to them, joes juice, f aiptasia additive) then there's what we do that would never involve any of that: deep rasping surgery outside the tank. My concern is that after this much buildup time the numbers are too daunting to employ our screwdriver trick which works wonders and is the only way I would ever ever use or recommend.
Animals as aiptasia grazers, injections and concoctions applied simply only work sometimes and they rarely work when someone is told to control aiptasia that way. When they do work is when someone gets lucky with those ways, and its not common or aiptasia wouldn't be the third worst scourge in the hobby they'd be beaten. The masses advise each other in ways that promote reproduction of aiptasia though they don't mean to.
The easiest path to fix your bad invasion is to switch out all your rock for new cured live rock from a pet store that has no aiptasia. This is costly bigtime, can't be dry rock must be live cured rock $$ and we can simply move your corals onto it and continue with your reef without any invasion
It'll save you days and days of complex surgical prep. Then you can use the correct prevention method to prevent any new ones from taking over your live rock.
*if that's not feasible and you must keep current rock then the job works like this: a razor blade can't be used for aiptasia on rock because it's too weak to cut rock
Has to be a sharpened flathead screwdriver which is tapped or pushed up under the aiptasia with your target rock sitting out on the counter in the air. It'll look like little golf divots dotted all over the rock when you're done which is why this is best used at the start vs at the end of an aiptasia invasion
You must chip up under the aiptasia, small damage to the rock, which lifts out its footing/pedal attachments to the rock which is what injections and animals leave behind to reproduce. The divot will fill in with coralline or coral growth over time.
If you want the arduous task of rasping your entire tank free of them vs a skip cycle live rock changeout let's do one example rock here from your tank as pictures
Take out a sample rock, set it on the counter, and go to town like an 1800's gold miner on it with a tap hammer and a screwdriver and manhandle the anemones off the rock they came in on, be forceful, notch them out at the base working carefully around corals. Do one rock to completion and post pics so we can see progress
