Lettuce Sea Slug Eggs?

[cet98]

Found these eggs on my tanks front glass panel :artist:

now...what to do?...
should I just leave them on the glass?...isolate them?

thanks!
C

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[droberts]

looks just like what my Greek goddess left on my glass and i was told they are eggs and they should hatch and the fish will feed on them and only a few may survive to reach full sized i Left mine alone i wanna watch them hatch

 

[Elysia]

I doubt you'll have a lot of success scrapping the eggs off the glass, so I would leave them. Whether or not you'll be lucky enough to have some successfully live and grow to juvenile slugs will depend on the species of slug you have, the types of algae in your tank, the types of predators, pumps, and filters in your tank, whether the eggs were fertile in the first place, etc. etc.

 

[cet98]

Update

Update

well, after sometime the egg rings eventually disappeared...
perhaps eaten by either my 6 line wrasse of clown...
then another "ring" of eggs were laid and I of course thought nothing of it....lah-dee-dah

well, I am so excited to say...I found Baby Slugs last night!!!!!!!!!
Five to be exact

Have no idea how they made it but they did

here are my "babes" :lol:!!!....

 

[Elysia]

Awesome! Can you get a photo of the underside of one of these slugs? That is the easiest way to identify the species. They look great, though.

 

[cet98]

Awesome! Can you get a photo of the underside of one of these slugs? That is the easiest way to identify the species. They look great, though.

for now, this is the "best" underside pic I can get
I'll try again later....please LMK what species you think it is

thanks!~

 

[cet98]

ok Elysia...here are some more pix
Left pic with "flash", Right pic without "flash"

thanks again!!!
C

 

[Jaguar]

Some made it! Grats. Crazy how nature works like that, but least you have some that pulled through.

 

[Elysia]

My memory is usually pretty good, but remind me -- these slugs are from Florida, right?

If so, I think that you have Elysia clarki, as this species has digestive glands running through the sole of the foot, thus the sole is green. The other common Western Atlantic Elysia spp. has an opaque white foot. E. clarki also has a small anterior midline gap in the parapodia, which yours seem to have.

IIRC, this is good news for you and your slugs, as this species has several advantages going for it. First, Elysia spp. are "sap sucking" "solar powered" slugs, which means that they remove the intact working chloroplasts and/or other plastids from algae and these plastids continue to photosynthesize within the slug's branching digestive system. While many Elysia spp. are only able to keep plastids for a few days, research suggests that E. clarki can maintain its plastids for a month or more.

Another "benefit" of this species (and for those who are caring for it) is that, IIRC, these slugs have been maintained in the lab as adults while only being fed a juvenile diet. As it is not fully understood what makes a juvenile slug switch to an adult diet, you may want to provide the algae this species is known to feed on. According to Nicholas Curtis, who has worked with this species, "... adults in the field sequester chloroplasts from two species of Penicillus, (P. lamourouxii, P. capitatus), and two species of Halimeda, (H. incrassata, H. monile), however, juvenile slugs in the laboratory will only feed on fine, filamentous algae like Bryopsis or Derbesia."

Most of this information can be found on the wonderful seaslugforum, which is a great resource. Its so rare to get such good data like this on a sea slug!

Thanks for posting the photographs - they are great. I'm so glad that some of the clarki survived.