[Dudester]

OK, this is both weird and wonderful. As you all know, lettuce nudibranchs are hard to keep around due to their short life span, and even more so, due to their tendency to find the overflows, powerheads and other locations not favorable to their survival. A few months ago, I lost an adult but shortly thereafter I found a baby nudi that has grown to adulthood and still resides in my tank. With my last cleanup crew order a while back I got another lettuce nudibranch that is lighter in color and more speckled than the ones I had and have photographed in the past (the only one of them I have left is the baby - now adult). Well tonight I found a baby "speckled" nudibranch in the tank, so the one I got from Reeftopia must have either been "pregnant" or it has bred with the other species of lettuce nudi in my tank! Very cool. It's currently buried in a small patch of bryopsis (eating it, no doubt) so I can't take a pic, but if it ever emerges I'll try to snap a shot.

Tomorrow is our next Austin Reef Club meeting. Clint and I are giving away Fluke-Tabs to all of the members that show up (we got 1000 of them!), and we're going to discuss dipping techniques and the importance of doing so. We're going to teach responsible reefing and hopefully, with proper dips and quarantine, we'll begin to rid our local area of the AEFW and other harmful hitchhikers. If everyone does this in their regions, we can all help to put a stop to the spread of unwanted and harmful parasites.

Ouch, I twisted my ankle getting off of my soap box.