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Thursday, July 31, 2008

Berghia for aptasia

Okay, for everyone that has those pesky glass anemones, aptasia, in their salt water, coral fish aquariums, I have a story to tell. I only tell this on my blog because I am so dang impressed. A few years back I bought a great coral with some aptasia attached to it. At the time I didn't think much of it. However, six months later, these pesky things were everywhere! I had hundreds of them all over my tank. I wish I never introduced them to my tank in the first place.
I tried everything that I could, peppermint shrimp, fish, injecting them manually etc. The list goes on. Finally I came across the Bergia Nudibranch. I thought I would give them a try as I had tried everything else. So...... I called and requested 10 of them. I have a 240 gallon reef/fish aquarium. The sales woman told me "I wouldn't disagree with that number". She told me that they would die off after/if there were no more aptasia. "Fine by me" I thought to myself, "as long as those pesky anemone’s are gone". When she told me the price..... for 10...... I was stunned. A little over 200 dollars. DANG!! Well, if they work they will be worth it. So I gave her my billing information and waited for them to arrive.
When they arrived in a small 4"X4" box, I opened it and saw what looked like 10 pieces of white rice, they were THAT small. I began to think, "have I been taken or what". What a rip off. So I put them into my tank, but before doing so, I took out crabs and/or other things I thought would make a morsel out of these very small critters (seriously, the size of a piece of rice). I could hardly see them, and with in a half hour, they were gone and I expected I would never see them again. I wrote off the $200 + dollars that I figured I had wasted.
I was looking at my tank about 1.5-2 months later, and I actually saw one of these Bergia eating an aptasia. Only this time, it was the size of a small slug. "Nice!" I thought to my self, one has survived and is actually eating the aptasia (glass anemones). Then I saw another, and another. All of them were grown. I still had hundreds of aptasia in my tank, and so I thought "well at least they will eat some before they all die". However, to my amazement, in the next 2 weeks, I could not believe the diminishing aptasia. Pretty soon, I was having trouble even finding some. I would say within three weeks of spotting my first Berghia again, I couldn't find an aptasia to save my life. I AM AMAZED! Looks like they were worth it after all. I am sure that a lot, if not all of my Berghia have died off, I haven't seen one for a while. However, I have still not seen a single aptasia for over a month. NICE! Anyway, if any of you are wondering about these little guys, and if they work, THEY DO! And in my tank........they ROCKED the house!

aptasia killer

1 comments:

Anonymous said...

EWWWWWW!!!! I hate water things and especially ones that look like furry sluggy stuff. That is so gross, but I am happy that you got your problem taken care of.