First of all, regarding the Vortech, have you taken temp. readings from it? DO you have an infrared thermometer to do so? You are right that typoically they need to be turned up to keep from stalling, but if it is a heat issue, then the reverse is true, at least that has been the case with my system. I had a bunch of stalls a few days ago, cleaned the wet end, and still more stalls. Turned it down and no more.
I have tried everything for aiptasia including Joe's Juice (scam), vinegar, hot water, kalk paste, 50 peppermint shrimp, and finally a CBB. I was very particular to get the CBB before it went into the LFS tanks, and when I brought it home, I QT'd it with a couple of rocks housing aiptasia. I did not feed it anything else. So, this little guy had nothing else to eat, and finally ate them all. Once I was thoroughly convinced that it would eat aiptasia, I released him into the display at night.
He has been very good at ridding my tank of aiptasia. When I put him in, there were hundreds of them all different sizes including some extremely large ones. They are all gone now.
Another thought I have for you is if you are skittish about a CBB eating all your feathers (which it will), you could make a batch of fish food and scrape a bunch of aiptasia into it. blend it up and freeze it. That just might give your fish the taste for them. I know it sounds crazy, but some of my best ideas are!
