Need aptasia advice

[SCRID]

Hello everyone, I need some serious advice on aiptasia control.
I have a 65 gallon RR tank ( pic below ) plumbed to a 40 gal. breeder tank sump in the basement. My outbreak of aiptasia is out of control. Been through bottles of Joe's juice and aiptasiaRX, but neither have worked well. I have been reading about nudis and peppermint shrimp and it seems the peps are possibly the best solution. If I do it I'm goung to dump 8 in my main tank and 2 in the fuge on my sump where there is one piece of LR with some small aiptasia.
Which brings me to my current stock. Right now I have:
Fish:
One 4" Diana's Hogfish
One 3" Spotted Hawkfish
One 3" Tomini Tang
One 12" Engineers Goby
One 1.5" Damsel
One 1.5" Matted Filefish. ( not touching the aiptasia )
One Blue Linkia Starfish

Corals are: some Zoa clusters, A yellow Gorgonian, and a few large Devils hand, a small staghorn coral. The tank is about 1/3 full of LR with excellent Coraline growth.

My main concern with going with the peppermint shrimp is the Hogfish eating them. She has in the past eaten two cleaner shrimp and a myriad of hermits and snails. So she would have to go. I'm not sure about the Hawkfish or the engineers goby. Do they, or will they go after shrimp?

I was also thinking I may have to scour the overflow and pipes to and from the sump to be sure theres no aiptasia hiding in there.

Thoughts?

Sump

 

[shifty51008]

Pepermint shrimp are hit or miss as alot of them are sold as pepermint's but are actually camel shrimp which wont touch aptasia, and if they do they usually only eat the smaller ones and dont touch the bigger ones. There are filefish that will eat aptasia, but looks like you already tried that. Then you always have the option of joe's juice, kalk paste, boiling water, or lemon juice.

Ive never had to deal with aptasia in my 11 years (knock on wood) but those are just things that i have read.

Good luck

 

[srope]

I just had a great experience using Berghia Nudibranchs. I have a 28g running for 5.5 years with aptasia for most of it. Used quarts of aptasia-x. Couple of peppermint shrimp which didn't work cause finding out afterwards I was feeding too much which the shrimp preferred over the aptasia. After 3 weeks with 5 Berghia I now have no aptasia. I suggest people look into them. Good luck to all!

 

[Crusinjimbo]

+1 with "stope" and the Berghia approach to Aptasia eradication! I had a major infestation that survived the paste and chemical attacks but 6 nudis took them out for good, well, for more than a year so far.

 

[SCRID]

So what predators would I need to banish from my tank to keep the Nudi's safe?

 

[new_world_disor]

Apstasia x is brilliant but fairly labour intensive

 

[FishN00b83]

I don't think you're going to find a 100% sure fire answer. People have mixed results with a few different things and you just have to try them and see what works for you. I have caught it outside my tank on frags and I've been lucky to not have an issue as of now.

I have injected them with h2o2, covered them in come kalk paste, then just stick the frag in the tank. If I were you I would try the lemon juice thing and just keep up with it weekly with water changes. Hit as many as you can every week and eventually you will win the battle.

I have seen lately a more extreme approach and If you are involved in a local reef club maybe you can get your hands on one. People have been using lasers lately to burn them from outside the tank. You can find a few posts on RC about it, just do a search.