Sea slugs are reproducing in my reef tank

March 31, 2001
From: Matt Woodworth

In a perfect world you would participate in this thread. http://www.reefcentral.com/vbulletin/showthread.php?threadid=18726

However, I understand that you probably don't have time to write on these boards so I'll put my question here too. Sea slugs are reproducing in my 75g reef tank. The tank is two months old. They are normally found on the glass. They might eat hair algae. Sometimes they are green (as pictured) and sometimes they are white. They are about .75 cm long.

What should I do? Is it possible that I have hair algae-eating sea slugs or am I kidding myself? Should I keep pulling them from my tank? Sometimes I pull about 10 per day.
Matt Woodworth

woodworth@acm.org

Woodworth, M., 2001 (Mar 31) Sea slugs are reproducing in my reef tank. [Message in] Sea Slug Forum. Australian Museum, Sydney. Available from http://www.seaslugforum.net/find/4046

Dear Matt,
I am not sure what your problem is. Most aquarium keepers are looking at ways of removing green algae from their tanks. Looking at your photos I am not sure if your have one or two species of sea slug. They look like sacoglossans of some sort, perhaps Stiliger and Elysia? but I am not sure. Have a look at some of the species listed in the Species List under the ORDER SACOGLOSSA. That will give you an idea of the variety of shape you may find in different species.

If you have slugs breeding in your aquarium I think you should be please that your system is in some sort of natural equilibrium. I doubt if the algae will be totally eaten out by your green slugs and they may in fact keep the algal film from growing on the glass. My advice would be to leave the slugs alone, don't remove them, and just see what happens. If they do start to eat more algae than you want them to, then cull some of the population then. it is possible you have one of the sacoglossans which are 'Solar powered'. Read about them on the Solar-powered page. If so, it is unlikely they will need to eat all your algae.
Best wishes,
Bill Rudman

Rudman, W.B., 2001 (Mar 31). Comment on Sea slugs are reproducing in my reef tank by Matt Woodworth. [Message in] Sea Slug Forum. Australian Museum, Sydney. Available from http://www.seaslugforum.net/find/4046

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