Berghia Nudibranch?

E

EWilly

New member
Anyone have any Berghia, or a local (Syracuse/Rochester area) source of them? I've got an uprising of aiptaisa that needs to be quelled! LFS' are wanting around $30-35 each, if they can get their hands on some.

I plan on breeding them once I get my hands on some - seems no one has them for a fair price. PM me if you have any leads or nudis to sell!
 
if there was money to be made raising these things I would think somebody would already be doing it. Perhaps they are. I know puter (Mark) and Milly (at CF) used to have these available.
Mike (magdelan) used to have some. I tried them.

I guess the bottom line bummer is the fact that they aren't really a silver bullet solution for Aiptasia in most reef aquaria.

If you can breed 'em and get $35 per slug... my hat's off to you :beachbum:
 
I'm up for trying them, gotta do something. Unfortunately I cant take the rocks they are on, and cook them. They've entrenched in zoa colonies and on rocks that are at the bottom of stacks. I tried a CBB, but I think it died from stress and not eating. Damn clown goby kept pummeling the CBB.

I've successfully used peppermint shrimp before, but my skunks keep killing any I add. Any other ideas to control them? AiptasiaX helped spread them, as it didn't kill any of them i tried it on.
 
How big is the tank? Aptasia X if applied correctly should kill them. Did you turn off your pumps when you applied it so it doesn't get blown off?
 
There was an aiptasia eating file fish being passed around the group for a while. I'm not sure what happened to it though.

Gary Majchrzak said:
if there was money to be made raising these things I would think somebody would already be doing it. Perhaps they are. I know puter (Mark) and Milly (at CF) used to have these available.
Mike (magdelan) used to have some. I tried them.

I guess the bottom line bummer is the fact that they aren't really a silver bullet solution for Aiptasia in most reef aquaria.

If you can breed 'em and get $35 per slug... my hat's off to you :beachbum:
Click to expand...

Some people make money off of them. You can't raise them with the intent of selling them here on RC though. It's probably not worth selling them to the LFS for 1/3 or 1/4 of what they get for them. If you sold to the LFS often, and they got to know you, you could probably get $10 or $12 cash each. Maybe that is what I'll try my hand at culturing next...
 
The thing with these guys is that you need a LARGE amount of aiptasia to sustain any sort of breeding. Once their food source is depleted, they quicky die off. You may think that you have a large amount of aiptasia, but these little guys will wipe them clean in a matter of days... then they die. The file fish worked well also, but they can get nippy around certain lps and polyps.
 
like I said

like I said

if breeding Aiptasia eating slugs were THAT easy somebody would already be doing it.

And if they were THE "silver bullet" cure for Aiptasia... especially so.
But it's not and they aren't.

Supplying reproducing Aip eaters with food becomes a real problem.
Additionally, once placed in a reef aquarium... these slugs are fair game for fishes that will eat them.

Best approach to Aiptasia control is a multi pronged one IME/IMO
-OR-
take all the rock out and torch 'em

I've added nudis, multiple Butterflyfish and a large Angelfish to help control Aiptasia. I've kalked 'em, nuked 'em, with everything out there and yup... I still have Aiptasia in my aquarium.

I've grown to like them :)
 
Last edited:
take all the rock out and torch 'em
Click to expand...

The fire purges well :).

I've done berghia. They eradicate aiptasia VERY swiftly in isolation. Too bad they get gobbled up by many fish and powerheads as soon as you put them in a reef aquarium... I cultured 3 of them into 6 in a plastic bin floating in my aquarium by putting rocks in the bin one at a time (I had a metric a** load of them). Of course then I got down to the bases of my rock stack, couldn't remove them into the bin and had to release the berghia into the tank... They were gone overnight :(.

I'm going to try electrocution next. And if that doesn't work, laserbeams :D Aiptasia X isn't terrible, but it takes many many doses to kill and more dilligence than I'm willing to use. Too bad the lasers are so expensive... Maybe I'll build myself one
 
SkiFletch said:
And if that doesn't work, laserbeams :D Aiptasia X isn't terrible, but it takes many many doses to kill and more dilligence than I'm willing to use. Too bad the lasers are so expensive... Maybe I'll build myself one
Click to expand...

Make sure to wear proper glasses.
 
Calfo has a good section about raising Berghia in his "Book of Coral Propagation." It was on sale for like $28 at Marine Depot a few weeks back.
 
A group on here gave them a try a couple of years ago and I think that gmneil ended up successfully breeding them locally. No one seemed to have long term success keeping them for some of the reasons that have been noted.

I haven't tried many strategies, but I'll share my experience. My tank wasn't overrun, but the were definitely unmanageable. I had anywhere from 30-50 of them at any time. Aiptasia x was OK, but I couldn't afford to keep using it to keep up the prolonged fight. I picked up a copper banded butterfly that devoured them, but I couldn't keep it long term. I've been using kalk paste ever since. Ii turn the pumps and power heads off, paste them, and then leave the pumps and powerheads off for 10 minutes. I do this once a month. The most that I seem to have at one time now is between 5-7.

If anyone ever comes up with a silver bullet against aiptasia I'll buy one the size of a missile and fire it out of a bazooka.
 
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