Lettuce nudibranch loves overflows?

[WindowMaker]

Anyone else have these little buggers? It seems like I am pulling both of them out of my overflow on a daily basis. suggestions?

[Cal_stir]

i don't have any but am wondering if they eat green bubble algea.
sorry if i jacked this thread

[WindowMaker]

I dont have any so I couldnt tell you

[chandigz]

Mine always like the overflow and would end up in my sump. It would then return to my display after going thru the return pump usually getting shorter each time. At one point i had one with this huge head and a 1/4" body. They also liked my powerheads.

[WindowMaker]

awesome. so they are just infinitely stupid...

[FitoPharmer]

IME with these little guys and what I have read, they really only like a few types of very fine macro algae. Or at least that is what the larger mature specimen I have kept seemed to really eat. If they cannot find it they will wander around until they find more or their death. I had an overwhelmingly good experience with my one lettuce slug even though mine suddenly disappeared from my main display. For months I just wrote it off as another MIA. But luckily I had a huge 120G caulerpa/macro sump and another 110G dutch refuge. When inspecting the fauna in the sump one day, I noticed small green things that were larger then most pods, but smaller then the mini shrimp I had in the sump. Upon closer inspection they were baby lettuce nudibranchs! hundreds of them. Sadly almost all of them died. I would imagine due to lack of a specific food. I remember reading later that the key to success was having a large thriving colony of halimeda in my dutch tank. Without knowing it the huge amount of perfectly good zooxanthella expelled by a healthy halimeda plants older parts dieing off and turing white is what helped seed the bodies of new born lettuce nudibranchs with cells for photosynthesis.

[FitoPharmer]

DP

[FishyFishy!]

Originally Posted by WindowMaker

Anyone else have these little buggers? It seems like I am pulling both of them out of my overflow on a daily basis. suggestions?

Mine were the same way. Almost ever single day winding up in my sump.

I used a smaller plastic mesh over my overflow. Worked great.

[whatcaneyedo]

Yes they are stupid. As are 99% of the other things we like to keep in our aquariums.

If you have a refugium it would probably be best to place it down there. These sea slugs are pretty much useless for nuisance algae control in a display tank anyways.

The Sea Slug forum had this to say about their feeding preferences.
"In choice experiments they found that E. crispata would eat a number of species of siphonaceous green algae including Batophora oerstedi, Bryopsis plumosa, Halimeda spp, Penicillus spp, Caulerpa paspaloides and Caulerpa racemosa.

Jensen & Clark (1983) later showed that another species of Caulerpa, C. verticillata (a very finely branched species, which looks a bit like a tiny Christmas tree), is the preferred food of the juveniles of this species."

http://www.seaslugforum.net/message/3863