Fishy Business

Breeding Berghia

Chrism1330

Chrism1330

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Just placed an order for some Berghia from Reeftown and I’m officially attempting to breed nudis.

Got inspired after seeing @SupraSaltyReefer post about it — had to see if I could pull it off myself. Big shoutout to him too, he’s been giving me pointers on how to successfully get this done the right way.

Chopped it up with my boy @memorej at work and we’re making this a collab. He’s supplying the aiptasia farm, and I’ll be keeping the nudis fed and growing.

Let’s see how this goes
Documenting the process from start to hatch.

Equipment:
3g tank
Heater
Air stone pump
 
I started digging through R2R threads and different breeder experiences. One user mentioned running carbon as a substrate in their setup, so I initially decided to try that route.

After setting it up, I talked with Tu and he strongly recommended running the tank bare bottom instead. His reasoning made sense — easier cleaning, less detritus buildup, and better long-term control for breeding conditions.

I had already added carbon, but once I removed it, the water still had carbon dust suspended in it and looked dark/black. I wasn’t comfortable risking it, especially with something this sensitive.

Decision made:
• Drained the system
• Replaced with fresh NSW
• Switched to bare bottom
 

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The Berghia officially landed from Reeftown yesterday afternoon while I was at work. First thing I did when i got home was inspect:

• Movement and response
• Body color (healthy white/cream tone)
• No visible damage

They’re tiny, but active — good sign. I ordered x3 of the small size they are about as equivalent to the size of an ant.

Since Berghia are sensitive to parameter swings, I kept things slow and controlled.

• Temperature acclimation first
• Slow drip acclimation

After acclimating, I added them into the tank — at that point there was no aiptasia in the system yet.
 

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Later that evening, I picked up some aiptasia from @memorej on a plate with zoas attached and placed that into the tank.

Within a short time, I watched one of the nudis crawl onto the plate and start exploring the area. Good sign that they’re actively searching and responding.


Aiptasia Propagation Research:

Since Berghia only eat aiptasia, food supply is everything. I looked into different ways hobbyists propagate aiptasia:

• Placing small rocks with aiptasia into a separate grow tank
• Cutting or irritating aiptasia to encourage pedal laceration (they clone themselves from tissue left behind)
• Heavy feeding to increase growth and reproduction
 

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Chrism1330 said:
Later that evening, I picked up some aiptasia from @memorej on a plate with zoas attached and placed that into the tank.

Within a short time, I watched one of the nudis crawl onto the plate and start exploring the area. Good sign that they’re actively searching and responding.



Aiptasia Propagation Research:

Since Berghia only eat aiptasia, food supply is everything. I looked into different ways hobbyists propagate aiptasia:

• Placing small rocks with aiptasia into a separate grow tank
• Cutting or irritating aiptasia to encourage pedal laceration (they clone themselves from tissue left behind)
• Heavy feeding to increase growth and reproduction
Click to expand...

I was reading that they love ammonia - 1-2 ppm with powdered coral food and they will grow like crazy..

Wondering if growing an aiptasia tank for the sake of it would be fun.

Remembering hearing on the reef beef podcast that at Pratt institute they give aiptasia as pets
 
L/B Block said:
I was reading that they love ammonia - 1-2 ppm with powdered coral food and they will grow like crazy..

Wondering if growing an aiptasia tank for the sake of it would be fun.

Remembering hearing on the reef beef podcast that at Pratt institute they give aiptasia as pets
Click to expand...
Yea read that reef roids works great
 
Off to a great start! Best advice I can give to others reading this thread is grow as much aiptasia as possible. Believe it or not, growing aiptasia on purpose is definitely a challenge. Maybe we need a “Grow Aiptasia contest” lol

The actual breeding of Berghia is doing nothing except have patience. They will lay eggs no matter what. Keeping them fed and having a food source is the tough part.
 
Cool project!
Algae control snail or two?
Did you start an aiptasia breeding tank to get ahead of your nudi ? If so whats the setup?
A while back I was storing live rock in a heated plastic bin which had alot of micro life living on them like pods, micro brittle stars, tiny snails, crabs etc all the usual stuff plus a few aiptasia!.
All was cool until a few months later I started tossing in leftover live brine shrimp once or twice a week just to feed the critters. Suddenly the small handful of aiptasia quadrupled and turned into a forest overgrowing the rocks within a few weeks! Live brine seemed to be the only trigger in the explosive growth. I heard pods eat nudi eggs so thinking large carbon pellets would work better as substrate then rocks/ rubble to harvest the aiptasia plus can observe easily for pods!
Are there any other colorful compatible nudi that you can breed along with Berghia?
Good luck
 
I tried lots of different options for feeding the Aiptasia tanks. By far the best was live baby brine shrimp. The ones from Aquarium Coop with the Ziss hatchery is the best and easiest way.

If you feed non-live food like reef roids or whatever it just pollutes the tank so fast you are doing huge frequent water changes. With the BBS they eat them all, very little waste left over to pollute. Having the Aiptasia tank get polluted is a serious issue not to be trifled with, since once it tips and they start dying the whole tank of Aiptasia dies very quickly, followed by all your Berghia starving to death. That’s why I always had 2 completely separate large Aiptasia tanks minimum.

Cutting the Aiptasia doesn’t really increase their growth rate. Way too much effort for the benefit, if any. A lot of people parrot that but I tried different approaches. They will grow and divide if you feed them and don’t let the water get too polluted.

They can grow under lights but that makes the algae, cyano, etc explode and makes harvesting them cleanly too much work. Keeping them in the dark is best. That’s why the Berghia you buy from real sellers are always white, they are eating clear Aiptasia grown without lights. When they eat Aiptasia from your tank they take on the colors of the brown Aiptasia they eat.

For the Aiptasia tanks, I had a heater, small sicce flow pump, small porous block or pebbles for bacterial filtration, and removable flat surfaces for them to grow on. I don’t recommend glass plates, extra risk for no extra benefit. I used various things but in the end I liked flat thin acrylic pieces glued together to form structures that wouldn’t lay totally flat and still be scraped easily. Having flat acrylic plates in stands should also be fine.

Bristleworms and many other microfauna we have can eat Berghia eggs or babies, so you want to keep everything clean. Which means having to clean out and restart tanks on rotations.
 
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