Unidentified nudibranch. Reef safe?

[rharr21]

:eek2:
When I turned my lights on this morning, there were three of these on the glass. They were all approximately 1/4 of an inch in length. I have a mixed reef with sps, lps, and softies. Can they stay or should they go?

 

[Grins]

Go. Do you have zoas? If so look for more as well as their eggs. They lay them in a spiral pattern.

 

[Pea-brain]

very few, if any, are reef safe and will consume either corals or sponges.

Dan

 

[kiknchikn]

Those are zoo eating nudis. Kill them all and check all of your zoos for eggs. You might want to QT them if you can to make it easier to check them daily for nudis.

 

[rharr21]

Yes, I have lots of zoos. I'll start eradicating them now! Thanks for the ID.

 

[kiknchikn]

Just to make certain, here is a link to Melev's ID of one:

http://melevsreef.com/id/dc_nudibranch.html

 

[rharr21]

kiknchikn,
The picture at Melev's ID, looks identical to what I have in my tank.

I can remove some of my zoas but there are quite a few I can't get out of my tank. I'm not sure what I'm going to do about those.

Any sugestions are welcome. In the mean time, I'm going to do some research on the subject.

 

[kiknchikn]

Get a long pair of forceps and try to pluck off any eggs or nudis you see on them I guess... you might want to have a siphon going in that area to suck out any that try to float away.

 

[rharr21]

Y'all know, I was hoping they were some type of hair algea eating nudis! Darn!

 

[kiknchikn]

LOL... if only those existed huh...

 

[Pea-brain]

True nudibranches are restricted to corals, anenomes and sponges I believe, and will most will only consume certain species of sponges or corals.

Dan

 

[rharr21]

Well, I wish they were dwarf sea hairs then.