High Tide Aquatics

Anyone breeding Berghia?

JVU said:
It’s going well. I’m focused on figuring out a good way to grow plague-levels of aiptasia first, so that I have a reliable food for them. I think I have about 50 in the 10g tank now, want to have several hundred before I start harvesting them.

I think the water is stabilizing and getting some bacterial balance, not requiring as many water changes and without any funky smells or unhappy looking aiptasia.

I haven’t ordered any Berghia yet since they don’t reproduce great in my tank either for whatever reason, so I’ll be doing the breeding outside my system. They can breed in the tank too, but in my experience they don’t sustain their population that way. My guess is it’s because my cleanup crew is too aggressive.
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Yeh I think CUC and wrasses are eating spial eggs

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JVU said:
It’s going well. I’m focused on figuring out a good way to grow plague-levels of aiptasia first, so that I have a reliable food for them. I think I have about 50 in the 10g tank now, want to have several hundred before I start harvesting them.
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I say you just go in with a sharp pair of short scissors or a scalpel and just hack away cutting them in half through the mouth. I'd almost put my money on 80-90% survival rate of each cut.
 
RandyC said:
I say you just go in with a sharp pair of short scissors or a scalpel and just hack away cutting them in half through the mouth. I'd almost put my money on 80-90% survival rate of each cut.
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Totally agreed, these things spread the more they are stressed or cut to pieces

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RandyC said:
I say you just go in with a sharp pair of short scissors or a scalpel and just hack away cutting them in half through the mouth. I'd almost put my money on 80-90% survival rate of each cut.
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Oh yeah believe me I’ve been thinking of doing just that. I think you are totally right, as long as the water conditions and nutrient cycle are able to handle it fine.

I just want to make sure the life support system is all good first. When we mess with aiptasia in our reef tanks and they multiply they have the benefit of a huge water volume, lots of live rock, diverse bacteria and CUC, etc. They are the small minority, and a few injured aiptasia are nothing compared to the whole bioload and system, so they have perfect conditions to multiply and bounce back.

In a small tank with just a bunch of aiptasia, going in and cutting them all up is likely to foul the system and have them not recover well. They are hardy, but they are still cnidarians after all.

I just got the bacterial and nutrient cycle going, like this week. When it’s stable, which won’t be long, I’ll start slow by poking/irritating some in one quadrant, chopping some in half in another, etc, and see what gives good results.
 
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Arvind said:
Seriously anyone have any for sale? My 20 gal is getting overrun


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I’ve purchased from reeftown.com a couple times and was happy. It’s expensive, but that‘s the best option I know of right now. I’ll be growing them out but too early to know if I’ll also be selling them. Even if I did it would be months down the line.
 
So the Aiptasia tanks appears to have stabilized. Getting green film algae which I take as a good sign. Healthy looking Aiptasia.

One issue that’s obvious in retrospect is that they don’t like to have their base exposed. They are squeezing their bases into the tiny cracks in between the tiles, which kinda defeats the purpose of having tiles. So I added a single layer of rubble rock (Ca reactor course media) on top of the tiles to keep them happy and hopefully mostly above the tiles. I need to be able to easily move the rock/tile they are on into the Berghia tank.
 
In my little experiment, baby nudis have finally started to appear. It was probably about 3-4 weeks from the first eggs being visible to seeing baby nudis, but at this point I just looked through and could count at least 10 tiny nudis (smaller than 1/4") going around my little 10 gallon tank. I've been very busy this week (just had a baby!) so the tank is getting no attention. And in fact I put a cover on it because I wasn't going to be able to be topping it off, and haven't so much as put in top off water in a week. No matter. The 2 adult nudis keep breeding and making new egg spirals, the eggs are evidently hatching and little nudis are growing. Aiptasia's are fine other then getting slowly eaten.

If you've got a supply of aiptasia, a 10 gallon tank and an airstone, breeding/growing these things is not hard at all.
 
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Dan-sf said:
In my little experiment, baby nudis have finally started to appear. It was probably about 3-4 weeks from the first eggs being visible to seeing baby nudis, but at this point I just looked through and could count at least 10 tiny nudis (smaller than 1/4") going around my little 10 gallon tank. I've been very busy this week (just had a baby!) so the tank is getting no attention. And in fact I put a cover on it because I wasn't going to be able to be topping it off, and haven't so much as put in top off water in a week. No matter. The 2 adult nudis keep breeding and making new egg spirals, the eggs are evidently hatching and little nudis are growing. Aiptasia's are fine other then getting slowly eaten.

If you've got a supply of aiptasia, a 10 gallon tank and an airstone, breeding/growing these things is not hard at all.
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Congrats on the baby. Is this your first?
 
Babies... the great equalizer for a tank. Got problems with calcium/alkalinity? Go to a calcium reactor. Away from the tank during the day time? Get an auto feeder. Want to know what the tank is doing at an instant get an Apex. Got the "problem" of being able to look after the tank when you need to? Have a baby.
 
ofzakaria said:
Wow man. I visited that store today..its massive. This store have the potential to move the market in north cal...
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Yeah, been going through Dan there since his home shop. He gets some great selection. At his last shop, he would QT and medicate all his fish. Though at his new shop with the volume he's dealing with, I would imagine he might change that policy since he also changes some of the lowest prices around... remains to be seen.

Either way, glad to have his shop up... he focuses on more fish and select corals, and so doesn't conflict with other shops... virtually little overlap so ultimately hobbyists are the winners with a wider selection available
 
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