silent1mezzo
Active Member
Recently I've been battling a fairly severe aiptasia outbreak in the display tank and getting my hands on Berghia has been challenging. That got me thinking about starting my own aiptasia and nudibranch breeding setup to both help myself and the local community. So here's the rough plan:
Setup Hardware
I've purchased (to start) two five gallon tanks. These are a little tall for my liking but they were the right price and a good way to get things going. I've added heaters to both to ensure stability within the tanks. I know it's not required but it'll allow me to introduce them back into the display tank easier and I had them lying around. I also included an airstone in each tank to help with flow.
For the Aiptasia tank I wanted to try a few different substrates. I laid down activated carbon in half of the tank and some seachem matrix I had lying around. I wanted to make it really easy for aiptasia to attach to the substrate and have it small enough that I could move to the nudibranch tank. This allows me to move individual anemones and then wash them out/dry them off once they've been eaten.
For the nudibranch tank I littered a number of frag plugs and tiles to get them an area to hide. I didn't have any dry rock laying around and I was worried about introducing pods with the live rock in my sump.
Move Aiptasia
I know cycling isn't mandatory for either tank but because I'm needing to grow out a decent amount of aiptasia while I wait to purchase the berghia I thought I'd just throw the aiptasia in and see how they grow while a tank is maturing. I've started pulling 10-15 aiptasia that lived in the sandbed of the display tank and tossed them in. I'll let the tank settle a bit before starting propagation (cutting, feeding, etc...)
Grow Aiptasia / Experimentation
Obviously to grow Berghia I need to grow a lot of aiptasia and this is where I'd like to spend some time experimenting. The first one will be with substrate. As I mentioned above I'd like to see if aiptasia grow better on activated charcoal, bio media or rock rubble. To start I'm going to add 5 aiptasia, roughly the same size to each section of the grow out tank. Every week I'll count how many are in each section.
The next experimentation would be around propagation and whether cutting, annoying (moving and touching) or leaving them alone produce faster growth. The general plan would be to get an understanding of growth by leaving them alone in the substrate test. Then thin them out and track grwoth by annoying them, repeat for cutting. These tests won't be perfect but I'm interested to see if it makes a difference.
Introduce Berghia
Once I've got a thriving population of aiptasia the plan is to introduce five berghia's into the berghia tank and start feeding. I'm not planning on doing any experimentation with the berghia as I don't want to risk it at first. Maybe down the road I would. The goal will be to grow, breed and keep a relatively small population (either sell or give away to local reefers) so I don't run out of aiptasia.
Here's some initial photos, I'm just starting down this path.
Setup Hardware
I've purchased (to start) two five gallon tanks. These are a little tall for my liking but they were the right price and a good way to get things going. I've added heaters to both to ensure stability within the tanks. I know it's not required but it'll allow me to introduce them back into the display tank easier and I had them lying around. I also included an airstone in each tank to help with flow.
For the Aiptasia tank I wanted to try a few different substrates. I laid down activated carbon in half of the tank and some seachem matrix I had lying around. I wanted to make it really easy for aiptasia to attach to the substrate and have it small enough that I could move to the nudibranch tank. This allows me to move individual anemones and then wash them out/dry them off once they've been eaten.
For the nudibranch tank I littered a number of frag plugs and tiles to get them an area to hide. I didn't have any dry rock laying around and I was worried about introducing pods with the live rock in my sump.
Move Aiptasia
I know cycling isn't mandatory for either tank but because I'm needing to grow out a decent amount of aiptasia while I wait to purchase the berghia I thought I'd just throw the aiptasia in and see how they grow while a tank is maturing. I've started pulling 10-15 aiptasia that lived in the sandbed of the display tank and tossed them in. I'll let the tank settle a bit before starting propagation (cutting, feeding, etc...)
Grow Aiptasia / Experimentation
Obviously to grow Berghia I need to grow a lot of aiptasia and this is where I'd like to spend some time experimenting. The first one will be with substrate. As I mentioned above I'd like to see if aiptasia grow better on activated charcoal, bio media or rock rubble. To start I'm going to add 5 aiptasia, roughly the same size to each section of the grow out tank. Every week I'll count how many are in each section.
The next experimentation would be around propagation and whether cutting, annoying (moving and touching) or leaving them alone produce faster growth. The general plan would be to get an understanding of growth by leaving them alone in the substrate test. Then thin them out and track grwoth by annoying them, repeat for cutting. These tests won't be perfect but I'm interested to see if it makes a difference.
Introduce Berghia
Once I've got a thriving population of aiptasia the plan is to introduce five berghia's into the berghia tank and start feeding. I'm not planning on doing any experimentation with the berghia as I don't want to risk it at first. Maybe down the road I would. The goal will be to grow, breed and keep a relatively small population (either sell or give away to local reefers) so I don't run out of aiptasia.
Here's some initial photos, I'm just starting down this path.
