aptasia eating file fish

[AndrewT]

has anyone ever kept one of these? i picked one up the other day but he seems to care less about the aptaisa in my tank. just wondering if anyone has had any experience with them

[Starsprinkle Rainbowsmile]

Did you get it from Shane? He has lots of experience with them, I'd give him a call.

[AndrewT]

yessir... but he hasnt touched any anemones hes been eating frozen food. i cant get peppermints cause i have a dwarf lion

[AquaJohn]

I think you may have to cut back on feeding. Im sure the food you feed tastes better than the aptasia.

It may cost a bit but if you get a bunch of peperment shrimp it will take a whilel for your fish to eat them all. make sure they are hungry

[JamesL]

I have resorted to chemical warfare with my aptasia problem. I bought a bottle of Aptasia-X, and it has been working pretty well. A bunch of anemones died after the first treatment, and the others I just keep treating about once a week or so till they die.

BTW, I have a bunch of peppermints in my tank, but they weren't touching the anemones at all either.

[+cyrus]

I heard cal buffer injected does the same thing as aptasia-x and other aptasia killer products except its well, cheaper. Has anyone tried it?

[Mike M.]

Ah, finally, another reefer here in Austin that has put a leather back in his tank. I added one in January and had the same feeling about ignoring the aptasia and just picking the low hanging fruit of daily feeding. Well, two months later, the few aptasia I had are now gone. I did not use anything else in the tank and I don't have peppermint shirmp. Bottom line is that I do believe he finally got around to eating the aptasia. It just took it a little while to do the job.

All the usual recommendations above are good, but I dig my leather back. He is just a totally cool fish and to date, I have not noticed any grazing on zoos or palys.

Hang in there with him, he is a very cool fish.

Best regards,

Mike

[JamesL]

I heard cal buffer injected does the same thing as aptasia-x and other aptasia killer products except its well, cheaper. Has anyone tried it?

Tried that, but didn't seem to work for me. The Apstasia-X seals the mouth of the anemone shut, thus preventing it from releasing larvae when threatened.

[Mike M.]

cyrus,

I think you'll find the using kalk paste is very messy so to speak. It works...melts those puppies down, but it also tends to slump and drift off the intended target and can very easily injure nearby valued inhabitants. If your tank is full of zoos and palys, polyps and the like, the kalk paste method is risky. The Aptasia X product is more easily delivered in a manner that doesn't cause lots of collateral damage. I stopped using kalk paste before introducing my Leather Back (Aptasia Eating File Fish) and used Aptasia X with much greater success because of its handling characteristic.

You can also inject boiling water into the little buggers. This is the cheapest method out there and some have reported great success with that method. Can't beat the price. I have not tried that method though so I cannot testify one way or another. To date though, I like the filefish the best. Does the job, demonstrates cool behavior in my reef tank, and seems to be hardy. Much better than my luck with copper band butterfiles and peppermints. At $35, it was not a terribly expensive experiment and the payoff in observational interest has been well beyond the $35 invested.

[+cyrus]

what is the species name? just any file fish? does it matter what sea it comes from that can sometimes effect if it will do it's job, kind of like a resume lol.