My Aptasia Eating Nudibranch Multiplied!!

[jayreef1213]

I was watching tv the other night and I looked over at my tank and saw two nudi's crawling on the glass I thought to myself hey there still alive. Meaning the two I put in there a month or two ago and then I noticed they were significantly smaller and noticed two more so there are four baby nudi's in there. Does anybody know of there breeding habits? or how long they live? I was told there life span was short. They do a wonderful job with the aptasia slow but they do the job. Thanks---Jason

 

[parshmar]

i've have nudi's split (fission) before and usually they died shortly after. Not sure my experiences mean anything, just sharing.

 

[ronkent]

They do reproduce, they will probably multiply even more. Until no aptasia left, then their goners.

 

[kmainzer]

I have raised 100+ berghia, all started from 3 original individuals that I got from www.inlandaquatics.com (Inland is a great company for aquacultured livestock - have ordered many items from them, and they are awesome). If you do a little searching on the web, you can find out all about their breeding habits. The short story is that they're hermaphrodites, which means that all individuals can lay eggs. Self-fertilzation is rare; mostly, they reproduce sexually with each other (rarely by fission). Gestation is 10-14 days, and the young eat the tiny little Aiptasia that split from the larger ones. Bizarrely enough, if you want to keep your berghia and raise them to adulthood (which makes a nice cottage industry - trust me!), you'll need to start a separate Aiptasia "food farm" tank right away to breed enough food for them. Each berghia lives about 1 year, so if you run out of Aiptasias before then, you should collect the berghia and pass the little tykes along to another RCer in your area. I traded for, geez, something like a few dozen frags and miscellaneous tank stuff. A few hints: berhia are nocturnal, so you won't see much of them during the day. If you want to collect them to give away, a turkey baster works really well. Also, you can tell the health of your berghia by their color - they absorb the brown Aiptasia symbiotic algae. If you berghia are pale and white, that means that they're starving - time to pass 'em along. Each adult berghia can eat something like 3-5 BIG Aiptasias a day - they eat a lot more than you think, and if they start multiplying, they'll clean every last one out of your tank within a few weeks. I went from an Aiptasia-infested tank (I mean like every surface covered) to NONE in ~3 months. They quickly overwhelmed the capacity of my Aiptasia farm (I know that sounds so strange, but that's what you have to do if you want to raise them), and I ended up trading all of them away.