Aiptasia control

wrote in message ...
Anyone used Blue Life?

I put a few drops on a few of the buggers, and looks like it kills
them. Any long-term effects? Any other products recommended?

The best product I can recommend is buing some peppermint shrimps.

Tried them; they don't work. Neither did copper-bands. I had one
actually eat flake food instead.

Of course shrimp will eat flake food - why are you surprised?

The copper-band is a butterfly fish. One could look it up.

I know what is fish and what is shrimp.
We were talking about shrimps originally and it was not clear
which was eating flakes causing your surprise...
In both cases they will prefer flake food as easy food source.
They will eat Aiptasia when hungry, so you need to limit feedings.

Note, Aiptasia will also eat flake food, so if you feed too much
and flakes float in the water you are feeding the pests, too...

In any event, I'd still like some feedback on the Blue Life, if
anyone's tried it.

Mike, are you the manufacturer rep? ;-)

I must have mistaken this group for one which discusses issues
surrounding reef tanks. I seem to have wandered into one where
people change questions to ones they can answer. My apologies.

You asked us for opinion - you got it:
we prefer NATURAL solutions over chemical war!
Any chemical product with unlisted content is a potential
danger in a reef tank. Anything which kills aiptasia chemically
will have detrimental effects on other anemones in the tank
and other cnidarians (corals). Aiptasia is just anemone, so
you cannot expect some chemical will be highly selective
and know which animal to kill. Yes, you use concentrate dose
to selected area, but the chemical stays in the tank in the
diluted form - if concentrate kills diluted form might make
the animals sick. If you use it a lot, to kill many aiptasias
you effectively poison your tank.

Shrimps work, you just do a mistake of overfeeding with flakes.
Stop feeding the tank for a week and you will see a progress...
Then do MINIMAL feedings every 3-4 days for couple of months
and let the shrimps do their thing - no chemicals required.
Aiptasia is a big problem in tanks where there is too much food
floating in the water for too long (frozen brine shrimp, flakes,
etc) and food is fueling aiptasia growth.