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Thank you for the info! It's a shame that the LFS lied to me, and that this cute little sea slug will most likely starve. I will look into the tunicates though, they look nice. Also, is there any sea slugs that don't require weird food?Welcome to Reef2Reef!
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 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.Golden Star Tunicate (Botryllus schlosseri) | Live Colonial Marine Specimen | Gulf Of Maine, Inc.
Order Golden Star Tunicate (Botryllus schlosseri) from Maine. A colonial ascidian specimen ideal for aquariums, classrooms, and marine biology labs.
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:
As a couple final words of advice:
1 - 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.
2 - while your LFS was closer to accurate than most, I wouldn't expect an LFS to give good advice (and selling nudibranchs - assuming they purposefully ordered them and didn't just find one in their shipment - is a red flag to me that they're acting irresponsibly for sales), so please take what they tell you with a massive grain of salt.
Welcome to Reef2Reef!
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 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.Golden Star Tunicate (Botryllus schlosseri) | Live Colonial Marine Specimen | Gulf Of Maine, Inc.
Order Golden Star Tunicate (Botryllus schlosseri) from Maine. A colonial ascidian specimen ideal for aquariums, classrooms, and marine biology labs.
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:
As a couple final words of advice:
1 - 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.
2 - while your LFS was closer to accurate than most, I wouldn't expect an LFS to give good advice (and selling nudibranchs - assuming they purposefully ordered them and didn't just find one in their shipment - is a red flag to me that they're acting irresponsibly for sales), so please take what they tell you with a massive grain of salt.
it was 30 dollars, here's a few pictures of it right now, sadly, my filefish that we are going to rehome bit off it's ears.
Looks cool, sorry you got misinformed...
They are pretty, but I would strongly recommend either keeping them somewhere where you can easily control their spread from (like a lone rock separate from the rest of the rock in the tank) or in a completely separate tank if you want to keep them for ornamental reasons - they've been known to grow over and smother corals, macroalgae, etc. under good growing conditions for them, so you really want them to keep their distance from anything that doesn't move that you want to keep alive.
Yes, but - as a general rule - the prettier they are, the more difficult they are to keep. Some that have easier food requirements:
Thanks!
Yeah, they're super cool critters - if you decide to try one, let me know.
do you know any online store I can get them at?
Unfortunately, no - you'd have to special order them, and it would be expensive.
The "ears" shouldn't technically be necessary, but it may be hard for the nudibranch to find available food without them - the "ears" are actually called rhinophores, and they're chemosensory organs, so they essentially act as a sense of smell/taste to help them locate things in the water.
neat, i'm just going to hope that it will eat literally anything that is in the tank, and that the filefish dosent eat its rhinophores again
