Thinking of some nudis

[mark97r6]

hey guys, a am thinking of adding a couple of nudi's to my 360g reef.

Firstly i am thinking ofa blue doris (Chelidonura varians ).
I have had a flatworm infestastion from the word go in the marine hobby! I got them in my first tank about 2yrs ago. Since then all my tanks have used the same water/rock/sand so all the life (good and bad) has followed suit.

I currently have my 360g +50g sump/fuge, and 2 x 75g tanks, all these tanks have flatworm but i have never fretted as they have never caused any ill effects though they do annoy me visually!

I also have such an abundance of pods that my mandarins/scooters and leopard wrasse never touch them.
So the plan was to introduce the nudi and if it did start to deplete the supply move him to another tank or even my fuge untill the population recovered!
I do feed the tank quite heavily with phyto/rots as i have a lot of filter feeders, and i guess this is feeding the F,worms.

My goal is not to erradicate the worms, as like i said they dont really bother me! but i really like the nudi's as they are so different.
But how much do they actually eat?
Would my system sustain one?
Anybody keep one?
Do they have any predators?


Secondly i have been looking at the Lettuce slug's (Elysia crispata )
But i have a few tangs, and have NEVER witnessed any hair algae, not even in my smaller tanks without tangs. The only nuisence algae i get is cyno! I have about 250kg's of live rock in the tank, does the nudi feed on algae to small to see? Would my set up sufficiently feed these nudi's?
will they eat macro algae's?
experiences?


Cheers guys, any comments welcome as i am trying to gather as much info/views on this before buying/or not.

Mark

 

[greenbean36191]

Chelidonura (not a nudibranch BTW) is nearly impossible to keep long term. They are quite good at what they do and usually deplete their food within a month or two. Moving them from tank to tank will likely keep them fed longer, but unless your tanks have flatworms in absolute plague proportions the outcome will probably still be the same. In any event, most slugs don't live longer than a year anyway. Since these guys are all wild caught there is no way to tell how old they are when you get them, so you may only have a month or two before they die of natural causes anyway.

E. crispata (also not a nudibranch) are pretty specific feeders. Their radulas aren't modified for scraping like most snails. They have modified radulas that are designed to puncture algae cells and suck the juice out. This makes it impossible for them to eat algae that is too small for you to see. They only eat Derbesia, Bryopsis, Halimeda, and possibly a single species of Caulerpa (one that I've never seen in the hobby). Unless you have hair algae, skip them.

 

[mark97r6]

Cheers for the reply Greenbean, you dont think its a good plan then!
Anyone else?

The thing is with the Blue dori, how do you know if you have enough flat worms? My fuge should supply them to the tank and i kinda looked at it just like a mandarin type of sinario!

Mark

 

[greenbean36191]

The thing is with the Blue dori, how do you know if you have enough flat worms?

You don't. If you have a lot of worms and a pretty big tank then go for it. I have a feeling it will be running out of food fairly quickly though. You never know if you don't try. I just don't want you to have unrealistic expectations of how long these slugs last.

If you do decide to give it a try be sure to keep your pumps, powerheads, and overflows covered to keep these guys out.