progress report +21 days

Some more egg spirals can be seen, but the earlier ones have either been eaten, moved, or hatched. I hope the baby Berghia can find some food. There are sure a lot of aiptasia there for them.

This is the underside of one of the arch-shaped rocks. You can see tube worms, as well as a Berghia and egg spiral.

progress report +12 days

Looked into tank and can spot 3 easily in the middle of the day. They are hiding. Noticed a new egg spiral, too close to edge of tank to use the underwater housing. Also, very close to the sand bottom.

I haven't noticed any difference in the Aiptasia. Hoping the population of Berghia will soon increase. I am told it takes about two weeks for the eggs to hatch. I'll come back to this area then.

Any reef central members have any comments to the blog, please feel free to post them here, or in my thread http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=995668

progress report + 8 days

Well, after one week it appears the Berghia are still hiding. I would have expected them to do a bit more damage (reference the top photo). Perhaps they are too busy doing the "Funky Cold Medina". At night, with a maglite and some patience, I can spot 6 of the original 10. They seem to hide in the same places, which makes me wonder, are they eating?

In the final photo for today's blog entry, you can see what I believe to be two Berghia taking turns having fun with their Hermaphroditism :-)

The egg spirals reported earlier have disappeared. Perhaps the yellow tang had fun with them?

Welcome

One of the worst battles I've faced in maintaining a coral reef tank is the invasion of the nasty pest "glass" anemone, a.k.a. Aiptasia. Once they get into a tank (I assume on some live rock or other hitchhiker means) they start enjoying the perfectly balanced water and lighting conditions you made for your corals / fish. Steven Pro refers to Aiptasia as the "tough little Dandelion of the aquarium hobby." And that they are, an invasive weed.

I've tried all sorts of methods, most involved injecting various liquids into each Aiptasia. But my 40 gallon tank has hundreds, if not thousands, and this task seemed only to make the population grow (most likely due to reproduction by fragmentation of the small pieces of Aiptasia that missed the siphon of my vacuum during the process).

So in comes the Messiah - I hope - the Berghia Nudibranch (a.k.a. Berghia Verrucicornis). These expensive, tiny little slugs eat only Aiptasia. I purchased mine from Lisa and Kevin, at Salty Underground. If you look to the left of the Berghia in this photo, you can see the spiral egg typical of the Berghia.

This Blog will be a photo journal of their work.