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 Posted 5/22/2006 2:33:02 PM |
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In all the reading I have done regarding breeding and selling the aiptasia-eating nudibranchs (formerly known as Berghia verrucicornis, now apparently re-classified as Aeolidella stephanieae) it seems the common factor in failure has been running out of aiptasia. In that regard, I have started culturing aiptasia well in advance of ordering any nudibranchs. I think I have read more about aiptasia in the past week than any sane human would tolerate. (If anyone has or knows where I can obtain this article I would appreciate the information: Hessinger, D. A. and Hessinger, J. A. (1981). Methods for rearing sea anemones in the laboratory. In Laboratory Animal Management. Marine Invertebrates (ed. Committee on Marine Invertebrates), pp. 153–179. Washington, DC: National Academy Press.) I suspect that article contains nothing I haven't already read in literally hundreds of articles, but, it might. 
I have two 10-gallon tanks in a sunny window for grow-out of aiptasia and room for at least 10 more as needed. Each of these has about 10 adult aiptasia and I'm happy (!) to say in less than a week's time have started seeing tiny new aiptasia developing after scrubbing some of the large specimens with a toothbrush in the tank to spread the love. These tanks are fed daily or every other day. I have 5 10-gallon grey plastic tubs with a few adult aiptasia each, in a darkened room that are fed daily to force asexual budding. I am feeding these tanks baby brine shrimp, btw. I plan to put the water from the dark tanks into the lighted tanks as I do regular water changes, to "harvest" the buds. I can add more dark tanks as well, and probably will in the future.
NOW! Finally, to my question: At what point do I have enough aiptasia to order some nudibranchs? I have, at last count, 2 dozen adult and stopped counting at 3 dozen newly-budded aiptasia. I know it takes about two weeks for their eggs to hatch once laid so I have that much "wiggle room" in the food culturing. I'm tempted to buy a couple of batches of aiptasia to supplement my LFS-freebies. I am not in a terrible rush as I want to do this right, but I am a bit impatient. 
Thanks for any input (and send me all your aiptasia)
-Sonja
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TANSTAAFL
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| Posted 5/22/2006 5:37:58 PM |
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| Im not ordering any Berghia until I have 1,000 + aptasia.Good luck with your setup.
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| Posted 5/23/2006 10:11:53 AM |
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| Sonja, I would wait a while longer before ordering the Berghia. When I attempted to raise my nudibranchs (just published an aritcle on reefkeeping if you haven't read it), I let 2 adults I had eat as much as they want and they ate 30 adult sized anemones in 10 days. Now Berghia may eat slower or faster, but that at least gives you an idea of how fast they can eat. Your roughly 60 or so Aiptasia would not be enough to sustain the adults for more than a month or two and if you want to raise the babies then you'll need a lot more of various sizes. I don't think the number of 1000 is that far off if you actually intend to raise the babies to adults and maintain a breeding population of Berghia. I had roughly 200-300 Aiptasia and tulip anemones at the height of my co-culturing of anemones and they were keeping fairly steady with the demand of the adults and trying to raise babies. If my babies had survived I would have quickly run out of anemones. Brian
7 years FW, 5 years SW
Education is the solution to pollution, not dilution.
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| Posted 5/24/2006 7:18:03 AM |
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I would keep going until you have a solid mat of anemones in both growout tanks at least. To give you an idea, Dr. Kempf (the guy that pioneered breeding the slugs in captivity) keeps two 150 gal tanks completely packed with anemones for his nudibranchs.
Mike G.
Ha'ina 'ia mai ana ka puana.
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| Posted 5/24/2006 3:49:03 PM |
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Thanks for the replies everyone. Knowing about how many aiptasia the little slugs eat in a certain time period does help me to make a better estimation of what I need to have before ordering them. Brian I didn't know about your article until you mentioned it so I went to read it, very good information, and I hope those slugs thrive in their new home.
Since posting I've added two more sunny grow-out tanks with water from the dark tanks. Tomorrow I'll set up another. I also have an impressive number (best guess, 75-100 of them) of 0.25" high new aiptasia in the first tank I set up two weeks ago. We have a 165g tank we bought with a setup off someone moving late last year that we have yet to set up (because it was covered in aiptasia when we bought it, oh the irony! Oh the starter culture I could have had if I had only known!) If I can find some way to justify it to the inlaws and my parents when they come visit, I could make that into an aiptasia culture tank... I can see it now: "Oh, you two finally set up the new aquarium, let's see how it looks... ... ... Why are there no fish in it? Or corals? Just a bunch of pvc scraps and those funny little squiggly things all over it?"
Thanks again all.
-Sonja
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TANSTAAFL
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| Posted 11/7/2006 4:50:29 AM |
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| You aren't crazy, you are very smart . I too have been reading a ton on this topic and I was wondering what the setup of your aiptasia tanks included. Filtration (if any), lighting (if any), etc. I'm primarily looking for someone who has some experience doing this as I am about to setup my first Aiptasia culture also. Thanks,
Shawn
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| Posted 11/7/2006 12:13:04 PM |
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| agreed... 1,000 bare minimum to have a sustainable harvest for even a small colony of Berghia in culture. Its really quite staggering how much you need to grow even a few hundred baby "Berghia" each month. This requires most folks to wait 8-12 months before even thinking of buying theur first trio or so of adult "Berghia" Most folks are impatient... do not heed this... and fail. The other BIG mistake folks make is poor handling/culture technique. You need 2-3 staging tanks to screen your Aips for pests and predators on the nudibranchs. If you EVER scrape an aiptasia off a rock and just plop it into a nudi tank... you will watch that habit crash your culture(s) sooner rather than later (intro of worms, pods, etc) Please do not worry about any of this yet... simply get your first growing Aip pool. Feed them daily... obscenely... cut them in half on day 6... and do a near 100% water change on day seven. Then repeat. Some months later... you will have thousands of Aips and we can continue to the next stages of planning.
. Anthony Calfo
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| Posted 11/7/2006 2:17:24 PM |
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[quote]scanaday (11/7/2006)
You aren't crazy, you are very smart . I too have been reading a ton on this topic and I was wondering what the setup of your aiptasia tanks included. Filtration (if any), lighting (if any), etc. I'm primarily looking for someone who has some experience doing this as I am about to setup my first Aiptasia culture also.
Thanks,
Shawn[/quote]
Right now I have 5 10g tanks and one 12g plastic storage box for my aiptasia culturing. They are, for the time being, all independent systems. I am planning to add 5 more 10g tanks soon, as the ones set up now are getting crowded to the point that I think the population may be approaching saturation for them. The 10g tanks are already drilled with bulkheads installed, and I eventually may plumb them together and run them together with a sump to make water changes and other maintenance easier. I started out with some good-size aiptasia from a LFS, back in May of this year. Anthony is correct that you need to plan on 8-12 months to establish your aiptasia population. I don't know how many of the little buggers I have now, but there are a LOT of pedal lacerations growing in the 10g tanks. The specimens in the 12g crate are two 25-packs I purchased from Carolina Biological Supply (I'm fortunate to live 30min drive from them) however those are not as prolific as the ones from the LFS for whatever reason. The "tank raised" ones are much more healthy and hearty. When we had our upstairs A/C go out in August, the tank raised ones never blinked at the 90+ temps but the lab cultured ones took a hit and haven't ever really recovered to their former health.
I have airlines in each tank for water movement, but no actual filtration other than base rock rubble in the 10g tanks. They are set up on a heavy-duty shelving system in a sunny window in a spare upstairs room so as not to have to use artificial light. I do 80% water changes on all tanks at least once a week, and top off every other day. I feed daily very heavily, baby brine shrimp enriched with Selcon. I keep the salinity on the low side of "normal," simply to save on salt.
A few things that I've learned that may help you get started:
This isn't as easy as you might think. I thought it would be easier than it is, even though I knew it would involve work. Try to be patient and just let them grow, don't worry about a timetable on when to order your first nudibranchs. Not trying to discourage anyone at all, just saying go in with your eyes open and don't get discouraged when you're still growing your population 6mos from now and still need more.
Aiptasia prefer rock to grow on. I tried the acrylic rack method, bare-bottom tanks, and pvc pipe scraps, but I didn't start getting real pedal laceration development until I started adding base rock rubble, then they took off like little pestiferous plague-rats.
I keep the tanks only half-full, again to save on salt rather than do 8g water changes I'm doing 4g or so.
You have to do maintenance on these tanks the same as any other SW tank. Don't make the mistake I did at first and think because aiptasia are tough and nearly indestructible you won't have to do this. They will survive, yes, but they won't reproduce the way they will with maintanence.
Aiptasia move toward light, so once they migrate to the light source, move them back away and make them move again. When they move they leave pieces of their foot behind, thus the pedal laceration method of reproducing. If you let them stay at the light, you get less babies. I have tried cutting any yet, I have taken an old toothbrush to the rocks a few times to spread cells around. I suppose I should start trying to cut them as well, as most of mine are less than an inch wide. The original ones are huge now, like 3" wide and could easily be cut.
That's all I can think of for the moment, there's probably more but I'm headed out to vote as soon as my husband gets in from work. If you have any other questions please feel free to ask. I'm by no means an expert yet but I'm happy to share what I have learned these past few months.
-Sonja
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TANSTAAFL
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| Posted 11/7/2006 4:18:01 PM |
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| The only think I take exception too at a glance is: Aiptasia prefer rock to grow on this is not typical or even verifiable. Its coincidence reltaive to some other aspect of your husbandry. But truly... Aips will grow on most any hard surface. And you will see good academic/science/lab skilled folks only culturing Aips on plain/bare surfaces. Its hobbyists without science skills that get the notion somehow that they want/need rock. But it is a surefire way to provide a vector for pests and parasites that will eventually decimate your Berghia culture. No porous media under any circumstance please(!). Focus instead on heavy particulaue feeding, massive water flow (increases feeding ops, waste purging, dispersion of buds, and growth overall) and super water quality to grow Aips fast... without any rock or sand please. Empty tanks for Aips... ala desirable anemone farming setups.
. Anthony Calfo
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| Posted 11/7/2006 4:24:39 PM |
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| This is great information. Anthony, thanks for the feedback to get me going in the right direction on the PM. I'm definitely going to be taking this slowly and I want to do it right. My goal is to have my aiptasia culture started by 12/1/2006 and I don't have any dreams of buying any berghia for as long as it takes to get the aiptasia established. Redsonja, thanks a million for sharing the information you have collected and experience you have had with starting your culture. That is priceless information and will take it all to heart. Here is my idea on my setup. I was planning on using pint mason jars to hold the nudibranch's with them held in 20 High aquariums (I have 4 of these on hand). I am planning on building a pvc frame to suspend an egg crate shelf that holds the mason jars at the top of the 20 High aquariums. I was planning on putting rock in the bottom under the egg crate shelf and culturing aiptasia there. I know that the Berghia containers need to have mature tank water instead of new salt water, so I was wondering if I could use water from the 20 High tank to put in the jars. Do you see this as a problem or should I pull that water from a different established tank? Also, what kind of lighting do you use on your Aiptasia. Are NO bulbs just fine? Thanks,
Shawn
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