non sponge eating nubibranch ?

[johnb0184]

Are there any nudibranch that do not eat sponge besides the lettuce nudibranch? If so has anyone had any experience with them. I find them very stunning and interesting.

[greenbean36191]

Well, the lettuce "nudibranch" isn't a nudibranch. It's a sacoglossan. All nudibranchs are carnivores so if it eats algae that's a dead giveaway that it isn't a nudibranch. There are tons of nudibranchs that don't eat sponges, but most aren't any easier to feed and most of those that are easier to feed aren't very pretty.

The favorite foods of most nudibranchs are sponges, tunicates, cnidarians, and bryozoans. All of those animal groups are hard to ID and most are hard to keep in captivity. To make matters tough, most nudibranchs will only eat one or two species of prey, so it's imperative that you be able to ID their food correctly. To make things tougher still, we don't have a clue what exactly most species eat.

Even once you get past the feeding issue, most nudibranchs have lifespans of less than a year. Lots of fish and crustaceans like to pick at or eat them and they have a tendancy to wander too close to powerheads.

The best suited nudibranchs for captivity are the aeolids and dendronotaceans. None of the aeolids you'll find in the hobby are particularly pretty; they include the Aiptasia eating slugs, zoanthid eating slugs, and Phyllodesmium briareum which eats GSP. A fairly common dendronotacean, Tritoniopsis elegans, is fairly pretty, but it feeds on soft corals.

[johnb0184]

thanks for the info i kinda figured but i was hoping that someone new something that i didnt