Re: Where to get Chelidonura varians

February 14, 2000
From: Gary J. Robinson

I have discovered that Inland Aquatics is now selling this creature [Chelidonura varians] and I intend to get some to eradicate my plague of red flatworms.

There is an incredible paucity of information regarding aquarium care of this species. I have spoken to one person who used them to clean up his tank and he said the key was to turn off all powerheads and pumps and just rely on airstones for circulation. Apparently the little slugs get sucked into pumps and killed which is why they tend to "disappear" shortly after being released into circulation-heavy reef tanks. This gentleman reports it took several weeks for the slugs to do the job on his flatworm infestation, assisted by siphoning and a wrasse. Since everyone around here has flatworms, I figure a slug can be passed around from tank to tank on clean-up duty - if it survives. It will probably die of old age before it runs out of flatworms to eat in this town.

In any case an interesting article just appeared on easy mariculture of Berghia nudibranchs, at http://www.reefs.org, indicating they can even be raised in a jar and introduced to the aquarium as needed. I think I will order a pair of C. varians and see if such a thing is possible with them as well. It is easy enough to siphon flatworms and put them in the jar as food. Alternately I might try breeding a pair in my tank's refugium and letting them migrate to the rest of the tank. The refugium has very low currents so they should not get sucked into the overflow. I could even disable the refugium circulation and replace it with an airstone. I will report back on my experiments. At this point I have no idea of their reproductive behavior or cycle.

Gary J. Robinson

twisk@tlh.fdt.net

Robinson, G.J., 2000 (Feb 14) Re: Where to get Chelidonura varians. [Message in] Sea Slug Forum. Australian Museum, Sydney. Available from http://www.seaslugforum.net/find/1881

Dear Gary,
Thanks for the interesting information and please keep us informed of your experiments. We don't know much about the life-cycle of any of the species of Chelidonura but from the size of their eggs I would suspect they have planktonic larvae which will need to feed for some time before settling down to grow into crawling slugs. If you have plenty of flatworms, keeping the larvae alive will be the critical stage I would suspect. Have a look at Mary Jane Adams photo of the egg masses of Chelidonura so you know what to look for if your animals decide to breed.

Best wishes,
Bill Rudman.

Rudman, W.B., 2000 (Feb 14). Comment on Re: Where to get Chelidonura varians by Gary J. Robinson. [Message in] Sea Slug Forum. Australian Museum, Sydney. Available from http://www.seaslugforum.net/find/1881

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