Looking for berghia nudibranches for my Aiptasia problem

[daniella3d]

Breeding them?? are they easy to breed? if people can breed them then why are they so hard to find?

I would really like to buy some as well as when I had my flatworm problem it was a black velvet nudi that solved it in one month. I like my zoanthids too much to have any filefish.

Anyone breeding them in Canada?

Originally Posted by reefwars

breeding them is the only way to go and adding rock a piece at a time to a small tank with little flow or just air bubblers. plus if your aiptasia was to come back as nudis dont always find their food and the nudis died off from starvation then you would be back to square 1.

[reefwars]

Originally Posted by daniella3d

Breeding them?? are they easy to breed? if people can breed them then why are they so hard to find?

I would really like to buy some as well as when I had my flatworm problem it was a black velvet nudi that solved it in one month. I like my zoanthids too much to have any filefish.

Anyone breeding them in Canada?

they are very easy to breed they breed daily from what i understand.i had mine in a large mason jar with a air stone , and would feed them little heads as they were eating them.once they had babies i would move the babies to another jar using a turkey baster.you can tell if they are eating by their color and the obvious aiptasia being eaten.i would let the jars float in my tank to keep the temp where it was supposed to be.an air stone to provide oxygen and very little flow as they can get swept into current and be suspended in water untill they either get eaten,starve or find something to grab hold of.

heres the problem, nudis like i say are a slow process, not only that but they run the risk of getting eaten, sucked into equipment, and they can get eaten by larger aiptasia they are also very expensive.nudis need to attack in numbers to do any dent in aiptasia and they constantly breed untill you have enough nudes to clean out your tank. once they are done eating they will die from starvation unless you set up another breeding tank in which case you need to have enough aiptasia to keep them fed.

i was breeding them for a while but to be honest its such a pain in the ass and not all babies make it alive.

i would go peppermint shrimp long before i go nudis again. in the end after adding about 50 babies to my tank it was the filefish who cleaned them right out, even in a small tank with lots of zoas and palys to eat my filefish barely touched a thing.


because of my eel,tank size and number of aiptasia i was dealing with these were my only 2 options if i wanted to keep my rock.

[daniella3d]

I tried 2 peppermints and they did not do a thing for me. They were the real peppermint, not the cammel. It is also expensive to try peppermint.

A filefish is out of the question. I have a purple hornet polyp that I am battling to save and it's recovering now and producing babies, so the last thing I want is a filefish eating them and I bet it would be the first thing that a filefish would eat in the tank. Murphey's law.

So now I am doing this with Aiptasia X. For the pumps, I had put nets to cover my pumps when I had my black velvet and it was working well. My black velvet was tiny when I first got it.

I could probably take care of the large one with aiptasia X, which I have been doing anyway but it's the small ones that are growing within zoanthids colonies that I am having problem with. Too small to catch with Aiptasia X and I cannot let them grow in my zoanthids because by the time they get large enough my zoanthids will be dead. That's a pain.

How do the nudibranch work for getting rid of the small aiptasia that are in between zoanthids? Are they able to walk on zoanthids polyps and do that job?

Originally Posted by reefwars

i would go peppermint shrimp long before i go nudis again. in the end after adding about 50 babies to my tank it was the filefish who cleaned them right out, even in a small tank with lots of zoas and palys to eat my filefish barely touched a thing.


because of my eel,tank size and number of aiptasia i was dealing with these were my only 2 options if i wanted to keep my rock.

[Borderjumper]

The berghia work really well on zoas..that's basically why I got some. I'm breeding some in a separate tank, and I'm rotating zoa frags for them to cleannout

[reefwars]

Originally Posted by Borderjumper

The berghia work really well on zoas..that's basically why I got some. I'm breeding some in a separate tank, and I'm rotating zoa frags for them to cleannout

yes they do really well with small aiptasia, since they are so small and nocturnal they like to hide in small places so zoa colonys provide good hiding places it was the very big aiptasia heads i found they have trouble with and can even be eaten by them.


daniella how much aiptasia do you have?? i would recommend what border jumber is doing if your gonna go the nudi route and use a very small tank or container and rotate the zoas in there, that ways you will be breeding them controlably while keeping an eye on them and at the same time you can rid your zoas of those pesky tiny heads.



theres a guy on here his name is eric and hes canreef name is "themaster" hes a great standup dude to deal with and he was breeding nudis to great success as he was farming aiptasia as well.he has a great knowlege of nudis and how to care for them.hes the guy i got my nudes from and any advice i needed he was quick to help.he may still be raising them as it was only last yeat and im pretty sure he would ship so maybe shoot him a pm as he doesnt post a whole lot on here

[monocus]

i'm breeding them right now-selling them for $14 each-a book to check out breeding berghia is by dane banger-lots of useful info-especialy his banger breeders.i modifyed his breeders by using a 5 and 10 gal aquariums-my set up is under $150 with 2 30 gal sumps 3 breeders and an aptasia tank.they are almost no work at all-just water top ups and feeding the aptasia and nudies