Lettuce Nudibranche

[salisbury a d]

I read a post on these today.
Do they really eat hair algae?
I somewhat of a Hair algae problem and I am consindering a lettuce nudi.
But will it eat my other macro algae that I want. Will it terrorize my tank?
Adam

 

[thomas712]

There is a great place out there for sea slugs which is where I got this. It's not really a nudibranch but a form of sea slug called Elysia Crispata
C&P
The parapodia in Elysia crispata are greatly enlarged and folded presumably to increase the surface area of the parapodia in order to harbour larger populations of the functional chloroplasts it retains in its tissues. The chloroplasts are obtained from the green alga Caulerpa sertularioides on which it feeds. The chloroplasts continue to photosynthesise within the body of the sea slug, providing it with sugars for its own nutrition. The process of taking chloroplasts from algal cells and keeping them has been given the name kleptoplasty.
Until recently this species was placed in its own genus Tridachia because of the large folded parapodia, but Gosliner (1995) has argued that this is not only unnecessary, but confuses our understanding of the phylogenetic history of the family. It is better to consider it to be a species of Elysia with a very folded parapodial edge.
Thomas

 

[thomas712]

I've heard the same thing regarding this slug, who knows maybe it has worked for someone. Now there is a black sea slug that does eat this stuff. Haven't heard from him in a while but I knwo someone in Texas that was having a huge problem with bryopsis and was going to try some slugs on it. He had tried the lettuce variety and they didn't touch it, they finally met their maker by getting into his powerheads, I heard it was messy.
Thomas

 

[j21kickster]

my lettuce nudis have already started mowing it down

 

[salisbury a d]

Originally posted by sammystingray
sertularioides is feather macro.....could have sworn it was bryopsis........my bad.
Sammystingray
I am confused now. It eats the bryopsis or the sertularioides/feather macro.
The feather macro is one of the algaes I have that I do not want eaten.
Adam

 

[thomas712]

There you see Sammy your not bad, They do seem to eat the bryopsis.
J21kickster - hope you have success with yours, keep them out of the powerheads.
Also found this in an article dated Feb 26, 2001:
In choice experiments they found that E. crispata would eat a number of species of siphonaceous green algae including Batophora oerstedi, Bryopsis plumosa, Halimeda spp, Penicillus spp, Caulerpa paspaloides and Caulerpa racemosa.
Thomas

 

[j21kickster]

Thanks- all of my powerheads have sponge prefilters so i think it should be ok