Nudibranches aka Sea Hare/Slug in home aquaria

DaleInCincy

New member
Thank you very much for writing about this topic. I've hosted two Sea Hares in my aquarium though seemingly without good results. The first one unfortunately found his way into a pump intake (which prompted me in grief to engineer a better guard system). However the second seemed to die of natural causes. It persisted in moving down the overflow system into my refugium. After moving it up from this area back into the main aquarium multiple times I surrendered to the fact that the creature liked and thrived on the algae and perhaps was better off in the refugium (though I wondered how it would cope with 24/7 lighting). After its death a large amount of juvenile ?snails? have appeared. With the help of your article I now have a bit of support for my hypothesis that these are offspring of the Sea Hare. The small snails have a shell but the underside exactly looks like that of the sea slug. Of course this is also similar to some of the other snails I have in the tank. Still I am at a loss how these juveniles are appearing everywhere; even inside my skimmer!

The name of my former slug is Dolabrifera brazieri as described here:

Here are some photos:

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I've just poked around online looking for pictures and descriptions of the Stomatella snails and you may be on to something Skipper. Perhaps they hitchhiked their way in. My observations of these creatures are that they aren't moving around very much which seems to contrast Stomatella behavior. But if they are nocturnal mostly than I am missing their active periods. Sounds like if they are Stomatella snails than they will be beneficial. I'll continue watching and learning about these mysterious new inhabitants. The poplulation of these went from 0 to like 40 nearly overnnight! Thanks for your input.
 
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