Breeding Nudibranchs - Simple setup

[marinebreeders]

Sharing my experience breeding nudis along with some close ups. I am using a cheap handheld microscope to document my experience.

My setup is pretty basic:

Nudi Tank

2 - 5 gallon tanks ( hang on the back filter, air stone, and heater )

I use instant ocean salt and keep the salinity at 1.019 sg, 25% water changes every 3rd day.

I transfer the eggs from the adult tank to the grow out tank. Simply because the adults will eat the baby aiptasia and the baby nudis seem to enjoy the tiny little footing of the aiptasia. The tiny footings are an easy snack for the adult nudis.

Aiptasia Tanks

The biggest challenge remains keeping enough aiptasia to feed the nudis. Out of all the options to grow more aiptasia, what I found most helpful:

• keeping the aiptasia tanks at 81F,
• when I am topping off the tank with RODI water I purposely spray the aiptasia with cold RODI water ( tank is 81F and the water is coming at 50F) this really upsets the aiptasia.
• periods of blackouts lasting up to a month off no light at all ( a ton of footing develop and the aiptasia will move the top of the water column making it easy to harvest)

As far as feeding the aiptasia, I feed them 12hr brine shrimp and frozen reef plankton ( every other day and I switch the food between servings)

I currently have 3- 40 gallon breedesr, 4 - 5 gallon tanks and I am starting a 60 gallon shallow reef tank to continue growing the aiptasia farm. My biggest concern was from a comment here on R2R saying that once aiptasia reach a certain population size they can unexpectedly die off. I just want to be prepared. It may seem overkill to have these many tanks but the only limiting factor is the aiptasia population. I have been growing aiptasia since Nov 2022 and I just started to breed nudis. Patience is definitely key.

I'll keep the thread going for as long as I still have aiptasia. I want to explore the hatch rate when the variables are:

• phytoplankton (Isochrysis galbana),
• copepods ( I know amphipods will eat the eggs) Tigriopus don't seem to bother the eggs

Currently the adults and grow out tank is heavy on copepods and some phytoplankton and I am seeing good results. I'd like to compare how they are with out the pods and phyto.

More picture and videos to come...

 

[marinebreeders]

Not sure if video posted but here's the link:

Juvenile Berghia Nudibranchs

Sharing my experience breeding berghia nudibranchs ( age of the berghia nudibranchs is unknown size is less than 2mm)

youtube.com

 

[ISpeakForTheSeas]

Welcome to Reef2Reef! Sounds like a fun project, and I love the experimentation!

 

[Cichlid Dad]

I don't understand, I've never had problems growing aptaisia. Tell you what, I'll bring my rock over they are covered! Just joking. At 25.00 a pop locally, you will probably make more money than the average hobby coral seller.

 

[dmsc2fs]

I have always wondered if you could take a few apes and drop them in a blender with some display water. A few minutes on smoothie setting should seed Everything when you dump it back into the tank.

 

[marinebreeders]

I don't understand, I've never had problems growing aptaisia. Tell you what, I'll bring my rock over they are covered! Just joking. At 25.00 a pop locally, you will probably make more money than the average hobby coral seller.

It is when you want them to grow that they dont lol

 

[marinebreeders]

I have always wondered if you could take a few apes and drop them in a blender with some display water. A few minutes on smoothie setting should seed Everything when you dump it back into the tank.

Tried and it does not work. They get stuck the blender blades. At this point I would rather cut them in quarters.

 

[ScubaFish802]

When you start selling the babies send me a DM lol

 

[ScubaFish802]

 

[CasperOe]

Cool! Thanks for sharing, seems like a fun addition to the hobby for sure!

 

[Gumbies R Us]

Thanks for sharing this and welcome!!

 

[marinebreeders]

Woke up this morning and found that a lot of eggs must have hatched over the weekend. Everywhere that there is an aptasia I find the swarm of baby nudis:


In parallel I am also running another observation:

I want a quantitive answer of how many aiptasia are needed to keep nudis happy. My approach to this question is to set apart 10 juveniles apart and watch them grow to an approximate size of 1 in. ( at this time, I do not have an answer of how many aiptasia it took to bring the eggs to the juvenile stage.... perhaps another post )

I plan on approaching this question by using a specimen container and cutting out holes so water can pass through the container. Since the nudis are juveniles now, I do not expect the nudis to escape the specimen container.

I used a glass bit and Dremel to cut holes in the plastic container. Pollen window screen mesh to cover the holes. Video to follow...

I plan to run this trial for 8 weeks until the nudis reach a marketable size of 1/2 or bigger.

Updates on

June 2
June 9
June 16
June 23
June 30
July 7
July 14
July 21

These are the nudis that I collected, there is 10 in total so far I have fed them 1 small size aptasia cut into 4 pieces as of 5/26/23:


https://youtube.com/shorts/joPL2AwdQBc?feature=share