Elysia Diomedia (lettuce Nudibrach) Rearing-Day One

RCS · #1 06/08/2006, 10:53 PM

Received my string of nudi eggs from MWP today. Of course, they were supposed to be here yesterday, but I think they'll be all right. I just wanted to keep a "living log" here so everyone who's interested can follow along and can make any suggestions along the way. I've bred one species of lettuce nudi before, but it was strictly by accident in a Bryopsis-infested tank. Of course, once I cleared out that problem, my happy dilemma of what to do with excess lettuce nudis also disappeared. I've always wanted to try my hand since, so here we go.

Current setup has the egg strand and a clump of Bryopsis in a small plastic container sitting atop a sumberged piece of live rock in one of my 45g frag tanks. This should keep the nudis in the container and prevent any larvae from escaping into the main tank, where they may be a meal for corals, my protein skimmer, any of the pumps...heck, maybe even some of the 'pods I've seen in there.

Day One is just about over...nothing big to report yet. We'll see how Day 2 fares.

mwp · #2 06/08/2006, 11:13 PM

Fred, again, I'm glad they showed up finally! FYI, the ribbon you got was laid sometime before 7:00 PM on 6-5-06.

Matt

RCS · #3 06/10/2006, 10:00 PM

Skipped a Day Two update since there didn't seem to be anything to report. Today is a different story however. Many of the eggs seem to have hatched, and thanks to my camera and my cool $50 macro lenses from Ebay, I'm thinking there's a good chance I have LOTS of tiny nudis in the container right now. I'm also thinking I need more Bryopsis!

Here's the egg strand today. When it arrived, the "solid white lines" (I'll get to these in a moment) were through the whole strand. As you can see, there's only a bit of them left.

Now, here's a nice closeup of the egg strand, still looks mostly normal for the most part:

And HERE is why I'm freaked out and a little excited. You can see in the closeup what (at least I couldn't) you can't see with the naked eye. Each of the "solid white lines" is actually lots and lots of little nudibranch eggs. And you can also see that the bottom of the container (this is about a 1" square section) is COVERED with eerily similar little white dots!! I think jnowell was pretty accurate in his description of them as little white flatworms:

I couldn't see these with the naked eye...which might be due to my contacts and the extremely small size. Once I zoomed it in and looked at it on-screen...well, there they are! I'll take some more pictures tomorrow and we'll see if there are any changes. Bryopsis seems to be growing well so far...and there's a few LFS I might be able to "help out" by clearing their tanks of some hair algae!

Oh, and just for fun, although it's a little out of focus (the things like a half-mm long, gimme a break!), is a zoom-in of a little 'pod I was trying to focus on. Imagine trying to manually focus a camera, while standing on your tip-toes and trying to use your off-hand to steady the camera. This pic is as good as it gets, folks!!

For size reference, the green stuff is Bryopsis.

mwp · #4 06/11/2006, 05:53 PM

Those are some great pics Fred - good luck!

Matt

RCS · #5 06/12/2006, 10:21 AM

The one of the nudis were easier at least. I had the container balancing on a piece of styro on the corner of the tank about chest-level trying to focus and take the picture of these teeny-tiny little dots...managed to only bump it once and didn't lost anything (thankfully!).

Will provide an update tonight and dig around on my hard drive for pics of my old nudi babies.

jnowell · #6 06/12/2006, 01:22 PM

THANK YOU FRED! Now I feel much more confident that the little "things" crawling around on my bryopsis are indeed the babies. They are eating quite a bit of it...but I have a freind who has a mammoth rock that's just covered in bryopsis. I'm going to set up a ten gallon and wedge that rock in there with sand and water from their current tank. Then I'll transfer the babies, probably next weekend.

Umm, can I "borrow" your camera and lens

Nice work, and thanks again.

Jason

RCS · #7 06/12/2006, 03:23 PM

The camera is a Canon EOS Digital Rebel 300D. I'm more than happy with it. The macro lenses are the little screw-on jobs from Ebay for $50. Well worth the investment there I think, for any camera. Probably not as good as the $1000+ macro lenses, but hey, I raise slugs in plastic containers.

RCS · #8 06/14/2006, 09:54 AM

No real updates for the last couple of days. They're definitely a little more visible as of yesterday, but I didn't take any pictures. I'll post some tonight after work.

jnowell · #9 06/15/2006, 11:02 AM

FWIW - At almost 4 weeks, most of mine have moved from the bryopsis onto some caulerpa prolifera. There is plenty of bryopsis, so at this stage it would appear that they prefer the prolifera. Also have feather caulerpa in, but no interest in that.

Don't know what that means, but I thought it was worth mentioning.

Jason

mwp · #10 06/15/2006, 12:06 PM

Interesting, very interesting! The parental tank has a few different types of Caulerpa in it, including prolifera, racemosa and mexicana in addition to the bryposis...the parents seem to exclusively feed on the bryopsis sp. I sent out with the eggs.

Matt

jnowell · #11 06/16/2006, 09:03 AM

Probably just a developmental thing...I guess? The guys from the slug forum also indicated several macros during the early benthic stage.

When we get sone with all of this, we are going to have to combine everything we learned from all three threads and write it down somewhere for future reference.

I was thinking my phyto had magically gotten them through the veliger stage....right up until I saw RCS's crawling away from the egg strand

RCS · #12 06/16/2006, 10:28 AM

Gah! I've been slacking on pics. I'll try and get some tonight.

I need to change my lighting, as the current bulbs seem to be bleaching out the bryopsis for some reason. I think the 175w halides may just be too much.

In my previous experience raising nudis, there was only Bryopsis in the tank at the time, and no Caulerpa, so I wouldn't think it would be "necessary" for development, though there must be a reason they're eating it...

mwp · #13 06/16/2006, 01:33 PM

Fred, don't worry 'bout the bryopsis bleaching out...it'll regro. Mine grows less than 1' away diagonally (and 2" below the surface, with the lights only 4" above) with a 150 watt 14k HQI + 2 18 watt actinics. Once in a while it seems to bleach out and then a week or two later it's all over the place (sound familar to caulerpa?!?!)

Haven't had any eggs show up for a while now...they may be done guys, so consider yourselves LUCKY and send me a new pair when they grow up!!!

MP

jnowell · #14 06/17/2006, 10:22 AM

Will do Matt! But it may be 6 months before I can SEE the darn things well enough to get one...slow growers! I still have hundreds, and if I skip a few days without looking at them, they actually get bigger

Jason

Krypticol · #15 06/18/2006, 07:47 PM

put me on a list for a few please....
no more eggs,....

mwp · #16 06/18/2006, 11:46 PM

Krypticol, the one on its "Deathbed" laid a tiny egg ribbon this morning...unfortunately I won't be able to pack and ship it tomorrow due to it being the one day I drive 2 hours each way to the office! If it's still good I may ship it to you on Tuesday...in any case all is not lost, there may be another ribbon in the future yet!

Matt

Krypticol · #17 06/20/2006, 06:10 AM

with an overnight ship we might be in business... I'll hope for the best for all of us!

Paul B · #18 06/28/2006, 04:55 PM

Matt, I can't count them but I would guess I have over 1000 little slugs running around. Of course I can't tell if they were from your batch or something else in the tank but I think they were yours. I will let you know if they grow into anything.
Thanks.
Paul

mwp · #19 06/29/2006, 01:08 AM

Coolio Paul!

SOMEONE is gonna get a whole slew of these, maybe if we're lucky EVERYONE will raise up a bunch (and I'll be kicking myself in the pants for not trying harder!). I sent out a ribbon to Krypticol last week and for the first time in 4 years a package simply VANISHED! Krypt..if I get another GOOD ribbon I'll let you know, but it's not likely. A couple tiny ones have shown up, and one of the two slugs has gone from 2"+ to about 1/2". I think breeding is pretty much done for these guys...

Patiently waiting...man it's tough!

MP

Krypticol · #20 06/29/2006, 02:42 AM

<----bad luck for me....I had set up an entire little 5 gallon octagon for bryospsis and he litlle buggers, but since Chicago USPS decided to raise them :-) I decided to keep it as a funky little nano. I happened to stumble upon a family of great lookin Green Clown Gobies so I put a fewon hold while they finish thier
quarantine period at the shop they are at. S0 i think I found my
little fish family for this nano.
I'll happily take a ribbon should they pop out another, keep me posted And anyone that got some babies, i sure would like to get on the list of who get some should they get shippable!!pretty please.
Best fishes.
Tony

Paul B · #21 06/29/2006, 04:09 AM

They were released into my reef after they hatched ans they seem to be all over the place on one end of the tank. I only see them once in a while. I guess they watch TV or hide somewhere other times.
Paul

jnowell · #22 06/30/2006, 11:07 AM

I recently released mine into the tank as well. They had decimated my bryopsis stock, but there are little tufts of it all over the reef. I see the ocassionally too, but they are still tiny. Mine are getting pretty old to still be that small. They are still kickin' though.

Jason

Krypticol · #23 07/02/2006, 02:46 AM

my overnight express mail package arrived from MWP in Chicago arrived today in all it's glory only 10 days late!!! Amazingly the water was still cool to the touch and the bags opened without the smell of death i expected,. I've have them in tank water with a bubbler some good healthy live rock, bryopsis (free at lfs) a nicepiece of macro from MWP that I beleive will make it ok, all in a 2.5 gallon about two thirds full and i have been creating the water movement every 20 minutes or so all day as i can't locate my minijet yet. I don't seeany egg strand and can't locate any veligers, but i'm not sure what i'm looking for, we are say 2 weeks from egg layed, and they didn't have any phyto in the bags for 10 days. I dosed litely with phyto, and haved searched with a 10x lamp, I have a microscope, but haven't been able to get at it yet as we had a family shindig here today. Maybe tomorrow.

mwp · #24 07/02/2006, 02:55 AM

COOL! Hey, if nothing else, I can't believe that little strand of that unusual caulerpa made the trip. I personally would be astounded if you had any viable veligers at this point; if you couldn't even find the strand in the bag, well...

Haven't had any new eggs laid, so I think those that have them are going to have to bear the responsibility of bringing up the next generation for us to work with. Good luck to all of you!

Matt

mwp · #25 08/08/2006, 01:56 PM

Any news on the Sea Slug Front?