Sargassum Nudibranch

[Danley]

Recently I visited a local beach in Florida, just 20 minutes or so from my house. I happened to be shaking sargassum sea weeds to find the variety of small creatures living inside of them, and I happened to come across a sargassum nudibranch. I have recently set up a 10 gallon aquarium at my school for educational purposes as well as showing my skills to some of my friends and maybe get them interested in the hobby as well. I have decided to make the tank a Floridian tank (meaning I keep species I find locally). Then I have decided it would be really cool to set up a nudibranch breeding tank and take on the challenge of breeding these beautiful creatures in captivity then introducing them back to their environment. It was moreso a project for fun and something to maybe study and pass spare time, who knows maybe discover something new? Anyways after doing a bit of research (not much is known) I have discovered that these nudibranchs eat hydroids attatched to sargassum seaweeds. Here is the question, how can I find these hydroids b looking at seaweed with the naked eye? I planed on collecting sargassum sea weeds once a week and acclimating them to my tank with new hydroids and placing the old ones back in the ocean (I am actually going to acclimate them back to the ocean). So are there any ways to actually find hydroids with the naked eye, I am not too familiar with these things. Also, since the portugese man-o-war is a floating hydroid colony would by nudibranch enjoy live or dead ones that wouldnt kill him but still offer a food source?
Here is the Nudibranch I found:

 

[Elysia]

Can you tell us what species you IDed your slug as?

In the photo posted above, you can see some hydroids growing off the right-most piece of algae. They look like a feather. Not knowing the slug you have, I am not sure if it eats these hydroids or not. Your best luck at keeping the hydroids alive would be to feed them newly hatched baby brine shrimp -- you could try to feed frozen baby brine, but that can soon cause your water parms to go off kilter and would require you to have some sort of power head in the tank, and power heads and sea slugs aren't a great combination. With live baby brine, if you put a light source over the hydroids, the baby brine will swim over to the light and give the hydroids an opportunity to capture them. The hydroids will reproduce if fed, and you'll likely see the tiny medusa in the tank.

I do not recommend that you put anything back into the ocean after you have removed it (unless you have simply removed it to view it and have not relocated it -- not that removal for any reason isn't stressful.)

Unless this slug has direct larval development or a very limited free-floating stage, it will be highly difficult for you to raise it in captivity (with what I assume are limited means.) Free-floating larva are too fragile to bump into the walls of a tank, and those that have a long development need tiny food that can easily crash a system. Even juvenile slugs may require a different food source from adults. To successfully keep the slug that you currently have alive you will need to keep both the algae and hydroids alive, which may be challenging enough giving the limitations that the slug will put on your system. Good luck and let us know how it progresses.

 

[kmk2307]

Nudibranches tend to be really species-specific with respect to their food source so I doubt it would eat a portuguese man of war and I would discourage you from trying to handle one. Also, if you have non-locally collected organisms in the same aquarium as the slug I would discourage you from releasing stuff back into the wild as you could be introducing exotic animals / plants. Google "Plumularia" which looks like the hydroid you have there.

 

[pagojoe]

http://www.seaslugforum.net/showall/scylpel