Edward - O. hummelincki

[sulley]

yeah they have gotten out of control the past two weeks....trying to find the best way to get rid of them...was thinking the best was the boiling water but edwaqrd comes right over when i open the lid. i dont want to burn him...looking up bottled things but want to make sure they are absolutely safe i just hate putting chemicals in

 

[CaptFish]

I cut the tops off of them with small scissor, but you have to be quick and very careful not to touch it before you cut or they hide. you have to sneak up and trim quick, like ninja!

 

[kpage]

honestly I use Aiptasia-X. It says it's perfectly safe for all fish and inverts. Even if fish eat it they are ok. I tested water parameters after using it and they were fine. It kills them like instantly, it's kinda eerie to watch.

 

[SabrinaR]

Before I started keeping cephs I had a HORRIBLE situation with the aiptasia. It was so bad that when the lights went out I could see the baby ones floating around in the tank. To count them was somewhere in the THOUSANDS and I am not exaggerating even a little bit. I tried everything... nudibranches, pep shrimp, raccoon butterfly fish, boiled water, aiptasia x, joe juice, lemon juice. Anything and everything I tried it... and none of it works... the truth is from what I have read though aiptasia x looks like it kills them and actually melts them down pretty quick but it only spreads the problem further.

(NONE OF THIS IS CEPH SAFE)
What I finally started doing was slowly killing off my rock. I would kill one or two by putting them in the sea salt we use and leaving them there for about an hour. My hope was to get the numbers down to a level that a raccoon butterfly fish could handle and actually make a dent in the aiptasia. So I did this and it was kind of effective (actually it worked pretty well) but it didnt always kill ALL of the glass anemonies but would kill all algae on the rock. Well then I thought I had an ick problem... my QT busted so I just took out all of my snails and inverts and treated with quinine *spelling? Anyway I treated my main tank with this and it killed every single invert I had in the tank...aiptasia, brittle worm and snail that I missed all died and my ammonia levels were through the roof. The only aiptasia I have now came in on another coral or rock I got after the treatment. And I can count those on one hand.

Now I certainly wouldnt suggest doing that... but if you get to your witts end you might dry out, boil or salt the worst rocks and think about getting a raccoon or copper butterfly for a while to take care of the rest. There is also one other stinging coral that has a better stinger than aiptasia and thats Catalaphyllia jardinei also known as an Elegance Coral. Now none of these things are ceph friendly... the elegance has a VERY aggressive sting, but I did try everything and I am just passing this along for when your tank is empty and you want to work on getting rid of them.

 

[kpage]

the truth is from what I have read though aiptasia x looks like it kills them and actually melts them down pretty quick but it only spreads the problem further.

Well when you get it the instructions tell you to try and cover the mouth (center) completely. What this stuff does is glues the mouth/center shut and stops them from reproducing. Anyway as far as I know it's ceph safe, but I didn't have that many so I didn't use that much. And I had no octo in the tank at the time.

 

[SabrinaR]

I wasnt trying to imply that aiptasia x isnt ceph safe, I have no idea one way or the other... I was trying to give a kind of warning to anyone else who may be reading the thread that what I did wasnt in anyway involving cephs.

 

[DWhatley]

I have used Joe's Juice in an octopus tank with good luck but it depends a lot on the type of anemone. I have some in a non-ceph tank that nothing seems to kill. I can melt them with most of the typical solutions but they just return (different kind than the one pictured). I added a peppermint shrimp to the tank and the multiplication seems to have ceased so I believe he is eating the spawn and at least maintaing a zero population growth.

Yesterday I tried killing two pieces of LR to eliminate some by soaking it in top offwater. I removed a hand full of brissles and four or five aptasia but when I put the rock back in saltwater, there were still some healthy ones on the rock.

 

[SabrinaR]

Yeah those little buggers can make you fume. I tried for months to rid my self of the problem. The only problem I had with using the salt was that it will raise the SG in the seawater so you have to stay on top of water changes. Since I have rid my self of almost all of it, when I find a new one here or there, I just remove and kill the rock. I wont even try to keep it alive any more. It is my opinion that aiptasia is so prolific that they can survive almost anything we can through at them in a aquarium. Its best to eradicate them quickly with out trying to save the rock/algae/worms ect.

 

[kpage]

I wasnt trying to imply that aiptasia x isnt ceph safe, I have no idea one way or the other...

I wasn't saying you were, I just posted that to see if anyone would say that I was wrong. I'm not sure about it so it was indirect way of seeing what others thought!

 

[SabrinaR]

Ah gotcha!

 

[sulley]

got this pic of him today...love this coloration he displays...only time i see it though is during feeding

 

[Lmecher]

beautiful

 

[sulley]

ah unfortunately this is what i found today....it was close to 5 months with edward and i enjoyed every second of it....the past couple weeks his appetite wasnt the same...his demeanor never changed

 

[CaptFish]

RIP Edward

 

[DWhatley]

I wish we had a way of knowing what goes out when they die (ie, heart - gills or primary -, digestion, gills, motor control). In all the eyes seem to go wide open so, like ours, the "lid" closing must be voluntary. Two of my mercs lost control on one side of the body first and in a human you would think stroke where a blod clot stopped circulation. If I understand it properly, their circulation is like ours inspite of the three heart arrangement so that the main heart feeds the entire body so my initial thought about one of the gill hearts stopping would not likely cause what I observed. I only saw this in two sibbling mercs so it many not even be common. I suppose even if we knew what they die of it may not help but we might be able adjust diet or water parameters as they age to extend their lives. Wishful thinking I suppose but it would be worth experiementing with if we had a clue.

With a 2 3/4" mantle Edward was one in the larger group (if we can even say this) vs the dwarf sized ones that are full grown at half that size (I expect Monty to be of the smaller variety). I am very glad Sedna came up with the ruler idea for an ending photo, over time this will let us collect a lot of information on sizing, especiallty for this species.