Nudibranchs that dont eat aptasia

[thedirtsoup]

Okay, I'm starting my first salt water system here pretty soon with the help of my brother who is vastly more experienced than I. I've been thinking about what to stock the tank with (20 gallons) and I had brought the idea of nudibranchs up to my brother. I understand that a lot of species in this hobby eat only aptasia, which means if i don't have a separate culture tank any aptasia-eating nudibranch would starve. I did some googling and wasn't able to find an answer to this so i thought i would bring it here; are there any species of nudibranchs that don't need aptasia to survive? preferably one that wouldnt destroy my ecosystem when its fully established.

(ps i dont NEED nudibranchs, theyre just my favorite sea creature and i would love to include them in my set-up if at all possible)

 

[Dread Pirate Dave]

As far as I know there is only one species of nudibanch (Berghia) that eats aiptasia.

Berghia Nudibranchs - Tidal Gardens

tidalgardens.com

They all need to eat something so your ecosystem will need to supply what ever that is. (coral, sponges, fish eggs...)

Acropora Eating Nudibranches!!!!

Hi guys! I have not seen much information about Acropora Eating Nudibranches, and wanted to share a few pics of what I found. I must have missed some eggs when I dipped and ended up with these guys on most of my new Acropora frags. I have attempted to pull the frags and dip every 4 days...

www.reef2reef.com

Nudibranch

A blob the size of a teacup slinks along the ocean floor in the shallow waters off of Australia. It’s a type of sea slug called the nudibranch (NEW-dih-bronk), a slime-oozing creature with a boneless body. Many of them also sport brilliant colors and eye-catching patterns on their skin. In fact...

kids.nationalgeographic.com

 

[WalkerLovesTheOcean]

Lettuce nudiranchs, blue velvet, and berghia. I don't recommend adding them because keeping up with their diet will be very difficult.

 

[Northern Flicker]

Okay, I'm starting my first salt water system here pretty soon with the help of my brother who is vastly more experienced than I. I've been thinking about what to stock the tank with (20 gallons) and I had brought the idea of nudibranchs up to my brother. I understand that a lot of species in this hobby eat only aptasia, which means if i don't have a separate culture tank any aptasia-eating nudibranch would starve. I did some googling and wasn't able to find an answer to this so i thought i would bring it here; are there any species of nudibranchs that don't need aptasia to survive? preferably one that wouldnt destroy my ecosystem when its fully established.

(ps i dont NEED nudibranchs, theyre just my favorite sea creature and i would love to include them in my set-up if at all possible)

The only other one I can recalled seeing while working at an LFS was the Blue Velvet.

As @Dread Pirate Dave mentioned, they are all expert level care animals so I don't think demand is too high.

Cool question though

 

[ISpeakForTheSeas]

Welcome to Reef2Reef!

Unfortunately, pretty much all nudibranchs and nudibranch-look-a-likes (such as Sacoglossan Slugs and Headshield Slugs/Bubble Snails) have highly specific diets - Berghia spp. (true nudibranchs) feed on specific anemones, Elyisa spp. (lettuce nudibranchs; actually sacoglossan slugs) feed on specific Caulerpa macroalgae species, and Cheilodonura varians (blue velvet nudibranchs; actually a headshield slug/bubble snail) feed on specific flatworms.


For any of these, you would want to research the specific species you want to keep, and you'd need to keep a grow-out tank of their specific food. You'd need to be sure you can maintain the food culture well before buying the critter(s). From there, if you can maintain enough food for the critters, you can probably get the critters breeding, but you'd eventually hit a bottleneck, where you're only able to produce so much food, so you'd only be able to support so many critters at once. So, many of the young would die off.


There are some bubble snails (Haminoeidae and Bullidae family species) that eat algae and can be useful CUC, but they're generally less colorful. Stomatella snails also tend to look more like slugs than snails, same with sea hares (though these come with other special care considerations).

If you want to keep a true nudibranch, your best bet at this point would be Chamberlain Nudibranchs:

Honestly, the best candidate I've found so far for this (Edit: and it's still not a good one, if I'm being completely open about it) is the Chamberlain Nudibranch, and it would take a pretty intensive amount of effort to attempt it (and it might not work):

These guys are unusual for dorid nudibranchs in that they actually feed on tunicates, not on sponges (your LFS was actually closer to accurate about the diet than most I've heard of selling nudibranchs though).

They don't seem to terribly selective as far as which tunicates they eat, so these ones may potentially be able to be kept if you can grow out some invasive tunicates fast enough.

Since you likely don't already have a large amount of fast growing, colonial tunicates (which would likely require a healthy amount of phytoplankton to grow), though, I expect your nudibranch will slowly starve to death - sorry.

If you want to try and save/keep it, you can buy tunicates from a variety of places, but the only species I'm aware of that is sold at the moment that might be able to grow fast enough is the Golden Star Tunicate, Botryllus schlosseri:

Golden Star Tunicate (Botryllus schlosseri) | Gulf Of Maine, Inc.

Common name: golden star tunicate Scientific name: Botryllus schlosseri Locations: found on pilings, floats, rocks, buoys, kelp, & in tide-pools Seasonality: available year round Colors: peachy - brown and black with white and yellow zo

gulfofme.com

Golden Star Tunicates are highly invasive, but they tend to prefer colder water - I can go into the specific methods of feeding and culturing these if you'd like, but it takes a few weeks for them to really start growing, and you'd need quite a large colony to provide enough food for your nudibranch long-term.

Anyway, for some more specific info on their diet and to see a number of different tunicates that they may feed on, see the links below:
The Sea Slug Forum - Nembrotha chamberlaini Nembrotha chamberlaini nudibranch Anilao

most nudibranchs are virtually literally impossible for us to keep at this point as we cannot realistically meet their dietary needs (sourcing and intentionally culturing enough of the nudibranch's needed food - especially when that food is a sponge, which are notoriously difficult to even maintain, let alone grow out - is not feasible for most nudibranchs); I would strongly discourage buying them at this point as a result. Hopefully we'll get to the point where we can responsibly keep nudibranchs in the future, but we're definitely not there yet.

 

[Jmp998]

Most of the nudibranchs are highly specialized predators, and for most of them the prey is something fairly difficult to supply long term (other than the aiptasia eating and algae eating species). For any of them, other than maybe the lettuce nudibranch and similar algae eaters, the only way to maintain them long term is to have a separate dedicated system where their food is grown. Otherwise they will outgrow their food supply and then starve.

 

[thedirtsoup]

Lettuce nudiranchs, blue velvet, and berghia. I don't recommend adding them because keeping up with their diet will be very difficult.

yeah fair enough! maybe one day when I'm more experienced. I've only ever kept fresh water so salt water is a whole new thing to me and I'm learning more every day