Nudi's, nudi's, Nudi's!

Just another thing to look out for... I know everybody has seen the typical nudibranch eggs on zoanthids in the "C" shape Like this...


Did you know they also lay eggs that look just like zoanthids? I got a rock of zoa's a few weeks ago, and it was covered in nudi's. I dipped it a few times, looked it over extremely carefully for egg sacks, and nothing, not a single one... Then every once in a while I would find a small one on the glass, thought it was one that escaped the dipping. Well I finally decided to error on the side of caution and pulled it out, dipped it another time and there were a lot more baby nudi's. I looked it over again, this time I pulled off 3 egg sacks (pictured above). Thought I had them. I was inspecting other rocks that came in around the same time, and low and behold, I spotted 2 nudi's. I pulled the rock ASAP, set up a little studying dish, and figured I would watch their behavior for a minute before I torchored them to death. Well guess what I saw??? I caught them in the act of "gettin it on"! (shoulda video taped it...) That just made me EXTREMELY irritated. So not only are then gettin it on in my tank, they are doin it right in front of me!!! So I borke out the lugols!!! 5 drops right on top of them! (see pic, they are on top of each other)


They took about 45 secs to fall off the rock. They died stuck together.(see pic)


Well as I was inspected the rock, something caught my attention. It looked like really tiny polyps with no opening on their tops. Then I noticed another group of them away from any other polyps. Similar shape to the zoa polyps, but a lot smaller and a different color. EXACTLY where the too nudi's were. I noticed after I hit them with iodine, something came off one of them. It was the little frilly things on their back, but it only came off of one. So I inspected my studying dish and low and behold, it looked just like the tiny polyps.

Male on the left, female on the right of this pic(Im assuming the one on the right is the female because thats the one that released the frilly things when it died). You can also see the egg's inbetween them where I found them originally when I yanked the rock out of the tank.


In this pic, you can see the closed polyps and something similar but browner and a lot smaller next to some of them.


I broke out the tweezers and went to remove one of the eggs, and they were strung together.

 

Cool info geek. thanks player....

 

nice nudi farming. do you have any more nudi pics maybe on a nudi beach.

 

Thanks geek.

What a way to go:

 

I thought I might get in trouble is I started showin pics of the nudi beach, I figured nudi sex was part of nature, so I wouldnt get this thread closed just posting nudi sex, nudi beach might get it deleted, hahaha.

 

most nudi egg sacks are long and curvy not the letter C. is there anything you can put in the tank to eat the rest of the nudi's you missed?

 

I have heard that some peppermint shrimp will pick through zoa colonies picking them clean, but never experienced it myself.

Ive gone through every zoa colony looking for those and only found them on that one rock. From MY experience, they only effect zoanthids, not zoanthus, or any of the other polyp species in zoathidae.

Various wrasse's eat nudi's

 

That tank is completely being torn down, never to be set up saltwater again. Its going to be a nice guppy tank ;D ... Laugh all ya want an shake your heads at the thought of that, but Im tired of not having a display tank cause of the problems Ive had, and I have all of my money tied up in other things right now so having a saltwater display tank just isnt in the cards for me right now. Besides, there is a lot of nice guppies out there

I still have my coral growing tanks though, and I plan on having more soon.