Question about Berghia Nudibranch

hrdneglcry · May 19, 2023

I purchased 4 Berghia in late March for an Aiptasia problem. If anyone has bought them before I had a few questions. I acclimated them properly. The were all living when I put them in the tank. The largest one is the only one that I have seen. I saw him about a week later. And I saw him a few days ago. He is quite large now compared to then. I wanted to ask if the others might possibly be ok too since I haven't seen them. And I've only seen him twice. I need more than one for this to work.

j.falk · May 19, 2023

Mine only came out at night time. Check your tank with a flashlight after all of the tank lights and room lights are turned off.

hrdneglcry · May 19, 2023

j.falk said:
Mine only came out at night time. Check your tank with a flashlight after all of the tank lights and room lights are turned off.

I did try that. The only time I've seem anything is the big one goes in the front glass in the morning before the lights come on.

Jmp998 · May 19, 2023

They will hide until they are hungry. If you see one, you probably have more. Even if you only have one of the original four left, by now you should have lots of babies. Be patient and see if your aiptasia start disappearing in another month or so.

Dolphis · May 19, 2023

Check your overflow and filter socks, could have gone down the drain.
They’re very poor swimmers.
Even in my AIO pico, my nudi will go down the drain and I’ll find it on the filter floss in the morning.

hrdneglcry · May 19, 2023

Jmp998 said:
They will hide until they are hungry. If you see one, you probably have more. Even if you only have one of the original four left, by now you should have lots of babies. Be patient and see if your aiptasia start disappearing in another month or so.

Really? There needs to be more than one to breed right? I hope theres more than one. There should be. I have only seen the biggest one. But the second largest was not far behind in size when I got them. Maybe I will see more eventually.

And I do not have filter socks. If they got i to the sump they'd have to avoid the skimmer pump but the sump has aiptasia too. I only had 4 but they were healthy and alive. I released them all together. I put their container in the tank until they crawled out.

Jmp998 · May 19, 2023

hrdneglcry said:
Really? There needs to be more than one to breed right? I hope theres more than one. There should be. I have only seen the biggest one. But the second largest was not far behind in size when I got them. Maybe I will see more eventually.

And I do not have filter socks. If they got i to the sump they'd have to avoid the skimmer pump but the sump has aiptasia too. I only had 4 but they were healthy and alive. I released them all together. I put their container in the tank until they crawled out.

Once they lay eggs, it takes up to two weeks for the eggs to hatch, and weeks after that before the babies are big enough that you have any chance to see them in a display.

Once they mate, the adults can lay fertile eggs for several weeks.

My suggestions is give it some time, there is still a good chance you will have success without having to make more of an investment. It would be awesome if you would update in this thread in a month or two so others can benefit from your experience, whether good or bad.

hrdneglcry · May 20, 2023

Jmp998 said:
Once they lay eggs, it takes up to two weeks for the eggs to hatch, and weeks after that before the babies are big enough that you have any chance to see them in a display.

Once they mate, the adults can lay fertile eggs for several weeks.

My suggestions is give it some time, there is still a good chance you will have success without having to make more of an investment. It would be awesome if you would update in this thread in a month or two so others can benefit from your experience, whether good or bad.

I hope you're right that they survived and bred.

hrdneglcry · May 23, 2023

Jmp998 said:
Once they lay eggs, it takes up to two weeks for the eggs to hatch, and weeks after that before the babies are big enough that you have any chance to see them in a display.

Once they mate, the adults can lay fertile eggs for several weeks.

My suggestions is give it some time, there is still a good chance you will have success without having to make more of an investment. It would be awesome if you would update in this thread in a month or two so others can benefit from your experience, whether good or bad.

So hopefully they have spawned? And once they do its off to the races right?

hrdneglcry · May 28, 2023

Well I saw a baby today on the glass. It has to be a baby because the others would have ti be quite large by now. So I am hoping that there are more and that things are going as they should.

Rmckoy · May 28, 2023

The negative issue with them they have a very specific diet and require aptasia to survive .

They will all die without food

Jmp998 · May 28, 2023

Rmckoy said:
The negative issue with them they have a very specific diet and require aptasia to survive .

They will all die without food

This is both the downside and the advantage. Unlike every other option, they are no risk to anything else in your tank. Unfortunately there is no way around this problem unless someone can come up with an acceptable synthetic feed.

hrdneglcry · Jun 1, 2023

This is pretty incredible. They are reproducing. I don't see a change n aiptasia yet but I am seeing more of them at various sizes including baby size. I may try to farm aiptasia to keep them alive after.

Jmp998 · Jun 1, 2023

hrdneglcry said:
This is pretty incredible. They are reproducing. I don't see a change n aiptasia yet but I am seeing more of them at various sizes including baby size. I may try to farm aiptasia to keep them alive after.

That's great! If you are going to try to farm Aiptasia it is better to start sooner rather than later, you will need more of them than you think to maintain a Berghia population long term.

hrdneglcry · Jun 30, 2023

I saw 8 tonight. Big ones. A week and half ago I saw a small baby. So they have been able to procreate. Three were in the first sump chamber. Shut off your air stones at night if you are tunning them. The Berghia get lifted into the water column and get into the overflow box. This is ok but I want them in my tank not all in my sump. Plus more chance to get into the pumps in the sump.

hrdneglcry · Jul 21, 2023

Update: They are taking down the Aiptasia. Inwas running air at night which lifted them into the water column and the overflow box took them into the sump. The aiptaisa one day was gone in the sump. Day by day they keep removing it in the tank. One laid eggs in the sump. Which is bad because there is no more aiptasia in there. They even cleaned out the Chaeto. I still have clusters in my tank. But they are disappearing. I shut the air off at night now.

hrdneglcry · Aug 13, 2023

They have eaten almost all of the aiptasia. It wonmt be long and it will all be gone. They got init to the sump. They cleaned that. They got into the frag tank where I was trying to farm the aiptasia.

Jmp998 · Aug 13, 2023

That’s great news that they are almost gone, too bad they got into your ’farm’ but hopefully you will be able to grab at least enough Berghia to resell and get your money back. It sounds like it took about 6 months from when you added them, so third generation or so they hit ‘critical mass’ and outnumbered the Aiptasia. Berghia reproduce faster than Aiptasia but if you start with a lot of Aiptasia and a few Berghia it takes a while for them to win.

nano reef · Oct 30, 2023

Has anyone ever used 1/4 nudis? I have a credit with salty underground so I want o go with them but all they have is 1/4 inch. Dont want to waste my money (small credit but dont want to waste credit either lol) plus time invested in waiting to even know if they are working. I used 4 last time but they were 1/2 inch and took about 3 months to notice a difference and now I have them in 2 tanks.. One of my tanks is all man made purple rock too which worrys me because they said to release them in holes/crevices in the rock. The only rock that has holes dosnt have aptasia on it! Its crazy because there is a significate amount everywhere but that rock. Do you think they will just get blown away and sucked down the intake? Would I be smarter to waste my 15 buck credit and get 1/2 ones somewhere else?

Jmp998 · Oct 30, 2023

nano reef said:
Has anyone ever used 1/4 nudis? I have a credit with salty underground so I want o go with them but all they have is 1/4 inch. Dont want to waste my money (small credit but dont want to waste credit either lol) plus time invested in waiting to even know if they are working. I used 4 last time but they were 1/2 inch and took about 3 months to notice a difference and now I have them in 2 tanks.. One of my tanks is all man made purple rock too which worrys me because they said to release them in holes/crevices in the rock. The only rock that has holes dosnt have aptasia on it! Its crazy because there is a significate amount everywhere but that rock. Do you think they will just get blown away and sucked down the intake? Would I be smarter to waste my 15 buck credit and get 1/2 ones somewhere else?

I would not worry specifically about them getting blown away etc. IMO, the problem with using a few small Berghia, is that you are relying on them to survive several weeks (avoid predation, pumps, etc) before they start breeding. If you buy larger breeding Berghia, and they live at least a few days, they will have already laid eggs and you have a chance of success even if the original Berghia suffer an unfortunate accident. If you start with juveniles, you are relying on them to survive several weeks and find each other again to mate and then lay eggs. I don't think smaller Berghia are necessarily a bad choice, and even ones 1/4 inch long have good survival and are pretty effective at feeding on reasonable size Aiptasia. However I would suggest buying 2-3 times more if you are starting with juveniles, which probably ends up being at least as expensive (depending on how your seller structures their pricing, 10 juveniles may cost more than 5 adults for example).

It only takes a few weeks for Berghia to go from 1/4" to adult, so if the 1/4" do survive they won't take much longer in the grand scheme of things. Unless you are buying a ton of Berghia you will not see much difference for a few months anyway, until the next generation starts getting big.

Alternatively if you have an Aiptasia covered rock that you can easily remove, then just buy the juvenile Berghia and put them in a bucket with the rock and an airstone. Then in a few weeks you will have adult Berghia to add to your tank. They don't need a heater etc as long as temp is at least upper 60's, they will grow and reproduce fine just more slowly.