Nudibranch food

[ninerfoelife]

hey what can be a source of food for the nudibranch?

 

[spongebob lover]

that's a tough one, what kind of nudibranch are you talking about?
Many of them eat different things.

 

[liveforphysics]

Only a small handful of types eat something available in our aquariums, that also happens to be something that we are willing to let be eaten (aka, zoo eating varietys etc)

You are in california, so unless you got lucky and bought one of the few types that can do well on typical aquarium fare, I would recomend going to local docks and pealing off a bit of each different type of sponge you are able to find.

Put each type near the nudi in small quanities(to try to prevent some bad poison from leaching into your tank in large quanity from a wacky sponge). See how it reacts, if you find one it actually will eat, then you may just be in luck, assumeing it also meets all the nudi's bizzare nutritional needs.

Sadly, I think something like 99%+ of all nudis are carnivors with a specialized diet of some type of sponge/coral/etc, but I did read some sucess story about a guy getting them to live for many months by feeding a type of sponge that was local to him.

 

[Jiddy]

I only see Nudi's at night in the wild, maybe that has something to do with their diets

 

[spongebob lover]

Luke is right.
There's also one that eats flatworms, another one that i believe eats some sort of algae.

 

[jetaero]

Nudibranch have very specific eating habits... Even the coral eating ones, only eat one type of coral. The lettuce nudibranch eats only hair algae, and algaes... There is the berghia verrucornis, which eats aiptasia.. I personally do not reccomend keeping a nudibranch in the home aquarium unless you have a large continous supply of what it eats.

-Josh-

 

[spongebob lover]

I personally do not reccomend keeping a nudibranch in the home aquarium unless you have a large continous supply of what it eats

I totally agree, they can be hard to keep if you don't know what you're doing.

 

[Jiddy]

I totally agree, they can be hard to keep if you don't know what you're doing.

How many nudibranch's have you attempted to keep in aquariums?

 

[Paul B]

Quote "The lettuce nudibranch eats only hair algae, and algaes... There is the berghia verrucornis, which eats aiptasia.."

You also have to distinguish between slugs and nudibranch.
Nudibranch's have external gills that usually look like feathers on their back. Nudibranch's are carnivores and are also usually more colorful. Slugs like the lettuce sluc (elisia crispata) are usually (but not always) one coler and are vegetarians. Both of these similar looking but different animals have very specific diets.
Lettuce slug.

 

[NaH2O]

Well, I was going to post what Paul B posted about the slugs vs. nudibranchs. Sometimes its easy to confuse them, and the most popular Lettuce sea slug is often called a nudibranch...even by myself on occasion .

ninerfoelife - do you have a specific nudibranch you are interested in learning about? Did you find one in your tank, or see one for sale recently?

Dr. Ron's book "Marine Invertebrates" page 335 says this:

All nudibranchs are predators on sessile animals, and all have specific mouth and gut modifications that prevent them from eating a wide variety of prey. Because these structural modifications are used to classify the four suborders, each group has a defined set of potenetial foods, as well as specific appearances.

 

[spongebob lover]

How many nudibranch's have you attempted to keep in aquariums?

One and that was plenty.

They're hard to find, hard to keep.... mine died after 2 days because i didn't know what i was doing... so no more for me.

 

[Paul B]

I wrote this article on lettuce slugs which are very easy to keep, nudi's however, I have never been able to keep alive for more than a few weeks. Of course that was when I thought they were the same animal as slugs.
Now I know a little better.
Paul
http://www.breedersregistry.org/Articles/baldassano2004/SolarPoweredSlug.htm

 

[alison]

You almost have to design your entire reef around the specific needs of the exact one you want. It is best to get an adult so it has a better chance of survival while you figure out how to keep him alive.

 

[spongebob lover]

It is best to get an adult so it has a better chance of survival while you figure out how to keep him alive.

lol !! that's funny.... sorry .

 

[alison]

Yeah, but when you're trying to keep one of those alive, you need all the help you can get. They're best admired from afar, not in your house.

 

[liveforphysics]

I got over a week from the nudi's that hang out on the docks near bremerton. Beautiful animals, I took 2 along with a chunk of the sponge they were on. Never saw them paying any attention to the sponge chunk, but I didnt have a lot of time to watch them. Sometime after a week or so, they were always looking normal and healthy (i assumed). They both just vanished, I dont know if the overflow got them or if they starved and died or what occured, but I never saw them again.

If you want some nudi's that you might actually be able to keep a food supply going for, there are some really beautiful pink and purple stripped ones, and some bright green with yellow striped ones that cruise around some of the docks in Bremerton area. They appeared to have no reaction to being placed in tropical temp water, but again, its not like I would have known what the signs of stress looked like for a nudi.

Overall though, unless you are doing research with a goal, its not a good aquarium pet to just be enjoyed as a pet. Some have some really increadibly toxins in them to, and I think all are at least toxic.

 

[spongebob lover]

Yeah, but when you're trying to keep one of those alive, you need all the help you can get. They're best admired from afar, not in your house.

I gree, they're really beautiful and colorful..... to bad.

 

[NaH2O]

I wrote this article on lettuce slugs which are very easy to keep, nudi's however, I have never been able to keep alive for more than a few weeks. Of course that was when I thought they were the same animal as slugs.
Now I know a little better.
Paul
http://www.breedersregistry.org/Articles/baldassano2004/SolarPoweredSlug.htm

Interesting article, Paul. I had introduced a soon-to-be-mother lettuce slug over a year and a half ago. A month or so after introduction, I found babies in my overflow box. Even in my super flow closed loop, big skimmer, BB tank, I successfully hatched sea slug babies, and raised at least one (I've also reared tiger striped trochus, too). These photos were taken in December 2004.....I still currently have one in my tank that has grown from these tiny images. I'm not sure what food source it is living on (no caulerpa in my system), but it has been with me since December 2004 (even after the tear down and re-set up, its still with me). The mama slug disappeared after I noticed the babies, however, a couple of the babies met their demise in the filter output of my skimmer. What I've noticed with the slug's behavior in my tank, when the closed loop switches sides so the flow is blowing in the area of the slug....if the slug can, it will crawl into a crevice and wait until the motorized ball valve switches to the other side again, then it will move on its way. I've also watched the slug get tossed into the water column, where it contorts its body, then the flow takes it to the rockwork.

These images were taken through a magnifying glass and the camera was zoomed in 14x. If I remember right, they were about 1/8" in length. Also, these were taken before I learned they are not nudibranchs, but slugs .