Looking for berghia nudibranches for my Aiptasia problem

[Midway]

Hi there,

Would anybody know when I can get some of these guys in town (Calgary)? I have a bad Aiptasia problem in one of my tanks.

Thanks,

Manny

[Baldy]

I have looked around a fair bit as well and was unable to find any. I broke down and ordered some from salty underground in the states. Shipping unfortunately isn't cheap though

[reefwars]

nudis are such an expensive way to treat aiptasia and more than half the people either lose or kill there nudis plus they take forever to wipe out plaque proportions. breeding them is the only way to go and adding rock a piece at a time to a small tank with little flow or just air bubblers. plus if your aiptasia was to come back as nudis dont always find their food and the nudis died off from starvation then you would be back to square 1.


matted filfish is the way to go just watch for nipping on corals, ive had 2 and one was a model citizen for his whole life and the other just nipped here and there, they can wipe a tank of aiptasia in a week and is only around $50 for the fish .they dont need a huge system and they are very easy to pass off if you dont want to keep it. they eat prepared foods after their job is done and are very hardy.

sorry not wanting to steer anyone away from buying nudis because they def do work but if your gonna spend over a hundred bucks on something you should also know there are alternatives.

once the nudis are done there job youll have to either let them die or turkey baste as many as you can and try to farm them yourself or pass them on.....if you can find them in a reef as they are nocturnal and very tiny and good at hiding in rock crevaces.


again just putting it out there not trying to downtalk nudis so dont anyone get mad :):)

[Baldy]

Everything I have read abot the filefish tells a very different story though. Whatit sounds like to me is with a filefish, your coral goes with the aiptasia.

[Aquattro]

Everything I have read abot the filefish tells a very different story though. Whatit sounds like to me is with a filefish, your coral goes with the aiptasia.

Not at all. I have zoos, SPS and LPS, the only thing any of the 6 file fish I've had ate were aptasia and flake/mysis.

[Baldy]

Well, the berghia are already on the way, so I'll give them a few months to see what they can do. I have 16 small sized nudis ordered for my 75g (yes I have a pretty bad aiptasia problem) and if I don't notice much change, that will be the next thing I try. Aiptadia x definitely doesn't work that well at least with an infestation like mine.

[reefwars]

Everything I have read abot the filefish tells a very different story though. Whatit sounds like to me is with a filefish, your coral goes with the aiptasia.


there are alot of people who have success with filefish a quick search on here will tell you so, there def are reports going both ways so like i said they can go for corals as well while some do not.another thing is to remember it has to be the matted filefish any other filefish will do you no good.i had mine in a zoanthid dominated tank and the only thing it ate was a few polyps of nuclear greens.i had plague porportions of over 300 heads in a 33g tank to the point where there were crazy amounts of tiny heads growing up through the zoas.if i had of waited for the nudis my zoas would be gone , even though the nukes were nice it was a small price to pay for saving around 80 different kinds of zoas and palys from being stung to death.

the nudis do work as do alot of other products and fish/inverts like peppermints and butterflies but none of them are a guarantee so it could be hit or miss with a few different things.

goodluck man im glad im not in that boat anymore lol:):)

[Baldy]

Hut in response to the OPs question, so far I'm happy with the service from salty underground. I will reply again after I receive the package on thurs

[daniella3d]

Breeding them?? are they easy to breed? if people can breed them then why are they so hard to find?

I would really like to buy some as well as when I had my flatworm problem it was a black velvet nudi that solved it in one month. I like my zoanthids too much to have any filefish.

Anyone breeding them in Canada?

breeding them is the only way to go and adding rock a piece at a time to a small tank with little flow or just air bubblers. plus if your aiptasia was to come back as nudis dont always find their food and the nudis died off from starvation then you would be back to square 1.

[reefwars]

Breeding them?? are they easy to breed? if people can breed them then why are they so hard to find?

I would really like to buy some as well as when I had my flatworm problem it was a black velvet nudi that solved it in one month. I like my zoanthids too much to have any filefish.

Anyone breeding them in Canada?


they are very easy to breed they breed daily from what i understand.i had mine in a large mason jar with a air stone , and would feed them little heads as they were eating them.once they had babies i would move the babies to another jar using a turkey baster.you can tell if they are eating by their color and the obvious aiptasia being eaten.i would let the jars float in my tank to keep the temp where it was supposed to be.an air stone to provide oxygen and very little flow as they can get swept into current and be suspended in water untill they either get eaten,starve or find something to grab hold of.

heres the problem, nudis like i say are a slow process, not only that but they run the risk of getting eaten, sucked into equipment, and they can get eaten by larger aiptasia they are also very expensive.nudis need to attack in numbers to do any dent in aiptasia and they constantly breed untill you have enough nudes to clean out your tank. once they are done eating they will die from starvation unless you set up another breeding tank in which case you need to have enough aiptasia to keep them fed.

i was breeding them for a while but to be honest its such a pain in the ass and not all babies make it alive.

i would go peppermint shrimp long before i go nudis again. in the end after adding about 50 babies to my tank it was the filefish who cleaned them right out, even in a small tank with lots of zoas and palys to eat my filefish barely touched a thing.


because of my eel,tank size and number of aiptasia i was dealing with these were my only 2 options if i wanted to keep my rock.

[daniella3d]

I tried 2 peppermints and they did not do a thing for me. They were the real peppermint, not the cammel. It is also expensive to try peppermint.

A filefish is out of the question. I have a purple hornet polyp that I am battling to save and it's recovering now and producing babies, so the last thing I want is a filefish eating them and I bet it would be the first thing that a filefish would eat in the tank. Murphey's law.

So now I am doing this with Aiptasia X. For the pumps, I had put nets to cover my pumps when I had my black velvet and it was working well. My black velvet was tiny when I first got it.

I could probably take care of the large one with aiptasia X, which I have been doing anyway but it's the small ones that are growing within zoanthids colonies that I am having problem with. Too small to catch with Aiptasia X and I cannot let them grow in my zoanthids because by the time they get large enough my zoanthids will be dead. That's a pain.

How do the nudibranch work for getting rid of the small aiptasia that are in between zoanthids? Are they able to walk on zoanthids polyps and do that job?


i would go peppermint shrimp long before i go nudis again. in the end after adding about 50 babies to my tank it was the filefish who cleaned them right out, even in a small tank with lots of zoas and palys to eat my filefish barely touched a thing.


because of my eel,tank size and number of aiptasia i was dealing with these were my only 2 options if i wanted to keep my rock.

[Borderjumper]

The berghia work really well on zoas..that's basically why I got some. I'm breeding some in a separate tank, and I'm rotating zoa frags for them to cleannout

[monocus]

i'm breeding them right now-selling them for $14 each-a book to check out breeding berghia is by dane banger-lots of useful info-especialy his banger breeders.i modifyed his breeders by using a 5 and 10 gal aquariums-my set up is under $150 with 2 30 gal sumps 3 breeders and an aptasia tank.they are almost no work at all-just water top ups and feeding the aptasia and nudies

[reefwars]

The berghia work really well on zoas..that's basically why I got some. I'm breeding some in a separate tank, and I'm rotating zoa frags for them to cleannout



yes they do really well with small aiptasia, since they are so small and nocturnal they like to hide in small places so zoa colonys provide good hiding places it was the very big aiptasia heads i found they have trouble with and can even be eaten by them.


daniella how much aiptasia do you have?? i would recommend what border jumber is doing if your gonna go the nudi route and use a very small tank or container and rotate the zoas in there, that ways you will be breeding them controlably while keeping an eye on them and at the same time you can rid your zoas of those pesky tiny heads.



theres a guy on here his name is eric and hes canreef name is "themaster" hes a great standup dude to deal with and he was breeding nudis to great success as he was farming aiptasia as well.he has a great knowlege of nudis and how to care for them.hes the guy i got my nudes from and any advice i needed he was quick to help.he may still be raising them as it was only last yeat and im pretty sure he would ship so maybe shoot him a pm as he doesnt post a whole lot on here:):)