Zoa Eating Nudibranch's

[dsfdbutterfly]

I know that this question has been asked a thousand times before. I've just recently asked and after reading (thank you to this forum) and a few helpful posts to my own I will be choosing a dip method.

My question is this, does anyone know the approx. life span of these little hated bugs? How long for them to be adults, lay eggs and then for them to hatch? I know that this would be an approximation but I'm wondering this for a specific reason.

I will be removing all zoa colonies from my tank and placing them in QT. Over the next two weeks I will dipping these colonies in an attempt to remove all nudi's attacking them. In the meantime from everything that I have been going through I can only assume that they have laid eggs in my rocks. Which means that there will still be some nudi's in the tank even if I remove the zoa's. So if I remove all food source how long will it take for them to all die off? If I leave them out for a month will I be safe? I will be more than happy to leave them out longer to ensure that I do not have to go through this again.

The tank is a 30 gal and I live in an area that does not have a LFS. I have to drive approx. an hour and a half to the nearest one for me to get anything. I have already "stocked" my tank with as many fish as I believe the tank can hold. I don't believe that a wrasse of any sort is a possible or viable option for me even if I was lucky enough to purchase one that did in fact include nudi's on it's menu.

Any advice would be appreciated. And just in case you are wondering no one here has to beat me up about QTing corals. I've learned my lesson and already beating myself up for this stupid mistake.

Angie

 

[jessiesgrrl]

Couldn't find anyone online that had the life cycle of that sort of nudi available, but I did find the below link. I think the most common nudi that eats zoas might be the first one. It's certainly the one I have seen in people's tanks the most.


http://www.seaslugforum.net/display.cfm?id=6316

You could also write to Mr. Fenner at WetWebMedia, although I did read the facts there and they were mostly referring people to the website I gave you in this link.

Sorry I couldn't be of more help
Laurie

 

[whodah]

mucho just posted that the nudi egg incubation period is 7-11 days:
http://reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=884605

 

[MUCHO REEF]

I wouldn't say this is concrete and I stand totally corrected. I say this because I set up a dedicated tank with nudis that I took from a store for the sole purpose of finding the incubation period which is fairly easy to do. I simply circle the egg sacks on the glass and counted the days it took for them to hatch. I took an average of the eggs that hatched over a two week period and came up with this number. More extensive observation is need to to secure a more accurate average in my opinion. I simply ran out of time as I had to leave town before I could finish. I am working on a write about nudis and some things I found. Something very shocking to say the lease. I want to set up the above experiment, or should I say, observation, to see if the above holds true regarding the incubation period.

Mucho