wrote in message ...
Wayne Sallee wrote:
The way to get coper-bands to start eating the
aiptasia, is to harass the aiptasia.

I am unclear on the concept of "harassing" an anemone
in order to get something to eat it.

Fully grown aiptasia is too big for shrimp or fish
to attack - they are affraid their stinging tentacles.
When you harass anemone the way it retracts or you
injure it causing it to stay retracted/deflated for
couple of days than you give the shrimps a chance
to eat it with no fear of being stung. This does
not apply to small, baby aiptasia - shrimps are able
to cause these to retract with sticking their
legs into the anemone body...

Also, consider the size of shrimp stomache...
If you have 2 small peppermints and 200 fully grown
aiptasias in a 200 gallon reef tank than do not
expect that shrimps will make a bid dent on the
population - you never allow aiptasia to take over
the tank - you need to act when first polyps are found.

Tell us more about your tank - do you have a pictures?
How big is the tank? Is it a reef tank or fish only?
How much live rock is there? How many aiptasia polyps?

Once the coper-band starts eating them, it won't
stop until it can't find any more.

That's what it does with flake food.

Then stop overfeeding the tank!
And switch from flake food to pellets.
Make sure every pellet is picked up by fish
and does not float into Aiptasia tentacles.