Who has had lettuce nudibranchs?
 

I have a weird pink/red fluffy hair algae and I am looking for somthing to eat it, so I am wondering what kinds of algae people have seen lettuce nudibranchs eat.

Steve

I had a couple of those nudi's. They ate my bryopsis and derbesia. (green hair algae)
You don't have a fish that'll eat it?

Mitch

no both my yellow tang and my foxface seam to be defective... :rolleyes:

Steve

Foxface too? :eek:
Man, my foxface is all over anything even resembling a slowmoving macro algae......including some corals even.... :evil:

Mitch

On two separate occasions I tried the lettuce seaslugs (apparently they're not true "nudibranchs" .. I have no idea what the difference is, though). Unfortunately both times they just slowly got smaller and eventually disappeared. I think the longest one lasted maybe two months. I had since heard (from word of mouth) that this is not an uncommon experience with them, so I figured I'd never try that again. But now I hear of another guy who's had them for well over a year and actually had them multiply?? :confused: So I don't know what to believe.

Does anyone have any good idea what is a "normal" lifespan of these guys and has anyone else heard of them multiplying in their tanks?

I had mine for about 6 months, seemed to be very happy, and did not shrink at all. He fell victim to my emerald crab last week =( I guess they have an affinity for them o_O

I did make sure to always have a handful of macro in the tank for it to munch on =)

What kind of macro? I didn't realize they had an interest in macro's.

But in my case I had hair, bryopsis (the reason I wanted to try them in the first place), and other fuzzy algaes, so I don't -think- it was lack of food in my case.

Do you have just the one, or do you have more?

I *had* two of them. They seemed to really enjoy grazing on the calupera, couldn't care less for the spaghetti. The little guy disappeared, and a week later I caught my emerald red handed =( I am sure that was the fate of my little guy as well. truly beautiful creatures. They could graze right on my feather dusters and they wouldn't hide in their tubes. Fantastic.

Correct, they are a sea slug. There's an article on the difference at http://www.seaslugforum.net.

Nudibranchs are also "sea slugs" or Opisthobranchs, they are just a different order of sea slugs than an order called Sacoglossa which your typical Elysia "lettuce nudibranch" belongs to...
But I highly doubt these Sacoglossans will eat your red tuft algae -
(Wrangelia argus perhaps?) because sea slugs are notoriously narrow minded food wise, often specifically matched for one and only one prey/resource.

I don't know about tropical ones, but most local sea slugs live 1-2 years according to my studies (2 years ago)...

If you love Sea Slug Pics, a neat site to check out is the "Nudi of the week" - http://slugsite.us/bow/nudiwkps/nudiwk24.html

Stephen