Ace's 75G

Finally got around to redoing my tank. I neglected it long enough (massive aiptaisia and algae problem). I tried several things over the last couple years to rid the tank of aiptasia without having to resort to starting from scratch but nothing worked. Nudibranchs, filefish, peppermint shrimp (30+), electric zapper, kalk paste... nothing got rid of them and everything I tried just seemed to make them spread more. Tank was just barely able to keep corals alive with all the issues. I was ok with the SPS corals just browning out, I knew I could save them from that, but once I started seeing some acros slowly start to die from the aiptasia infestation I knew it was time to get off my butt and fix the tank.

I decided to use some clean rock I have been cooking for a year. After I took the old rock out I knew it wasn't going to be possible to just quickly clean it and reuse it, so now I am nuking it to make it new again, and then I will cook it for a few months to reseed the bacteria. Last time I took the rock out I set it on the patio for a month to dry out, then soaked in RO/DI for a week, but somehow a few aiptasia lived through that and spread like wildfire again, so this time I am giving the rock an acid bath to ensure the rock is completely dead before I cook it.

Before video:


After video:

I know your pain. I actually tore down a 65 gallon tank years ago because I had a bad breakout of Aiptasia, including turf and hair algae that absolutely took over. In short, I bleached everything and started over. Some of the base rock in my nano came from this tank but figuring that most of the rock sat dean-and-dry in a bucket for 10-years...I assumed it was safe.

I'm about to buy Red Sea Aiptasia-X as I have a small breakout in my tank. It started with one and now spread to about 6 over a few month period. Had you tried this brand? I watched some Youtube videos on it and it appears to work well.

I have tried every brand of paste and gel there is. Aiptasia-X is just kalk paste. I even tried Zaptasia which is a gel (which worked the best at killing the large ones). The problem I have found with any of the paste/gel methods is even if it kills the big one, they release gametes into the water and babies sprout up everywhere making the problem worse.

The only thing that has worked remotely well for me is the electric zapper (I have not tried the laser method myself but that looks to be the best method by far), but it takes 5-10 minutes of zapping just 1 of them until they finally release and you can pull them out of the tank, and even then they will release gametes into the water so it is best to pull the rock out and zap them in a different container and rinse the rock well afterwards in a separate container of saltwater. Problem with the zapper though is if there are big ones that have a food deep inside a rock they just retract and you can't get to them so the zapper has only worked about 75% at best.

I have spent years and thousands of dollars on various methods to no avail. From now on I will save my $ and go the cheap route of just nuking the rock to kill off aiptasia and zapping the ones I can outside of the display. Best defense is a strong offense in this case.... as soon as you see one it is best to figure a way to kill it outside of the display to keep the tank aiptasia free as long as possible.