Neptune Aquatics

Anyone selling Berghia nudibranch locally?

I bought some from a guy in the Dublin area in 2013 or so. They did a great job and I've been aiptasia free until about a year ago after picking up a coral or two since then. Is there anyone locally breeding and selling them?

I love that these guys take out aiptasia in the overflow, sump, everywhere!!! Peppermint shrimp have been great over the years but only get the aiptasia in the display tank and they like to strip the food from the coral during feeding. So I'm done with peppermint shrimp.
 
You might want to try a file fish too. I forget which company it was (I think biota), but one of them was captive breeding them and training them to eat aptasia by only feeding it to them.
 
Found a couple of them in my tank this morning as they're basically out of aips and are wandering around. There's more in the tank, but can't locate them. $10 each if you're interested. Free if you become a supporting member. Pick up in Santa Clara in the next couple of days.
 
bummer - missed that.
Scuzy - let us know if you have extra eggs or even larger berghia for us to buy off of you later. I remember seeing the egg swirls more than a few times when I picked up mine years ago.
 
I picked up some large ones a few weeks ago if I see them in my tank I'll grab some out.


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Anybody still have some Berghia nudis? Given my job, I think I'll have food for them indefinitely... Maybe I can even get them to reproduce so I can give some back to the community.
 
In summary: I'm working on making genetically modified Aiptasia to help understand coral bleaching in more detail. Hopefully this understanding will help researchers come up with ways to limit the impending loss of most of the world's coral reefs.

In more detail:
I'm studying cnidarian-symbiodinium (endosymbiotic algae) symbiosis using Aiptasia pallida as a model organism in Professor John Pringle's lab at Stanford University. Aiptasia has potential to be a good model organism for all the reasons that it is a pest in our tanks: it's hard to kill, easy to grow, tolerates sub-optimal conditions, and grows quickly. Plus, we can treat the anemones with antibiotics to "cure" them of their algal symbionts (AKA bleach them) and they can still survive by feeding. We're developing tools to do genetics research in Aiptasia, with the goal to manipulate various genes in their genome and observe how these manipulations affect symbiosis. One of the major limitations to our work currently is that we cannot "close" the Aiptasia life cycle: we can get males and females to spawn, and we can keep the anemone larvae alive for over a month, but we cannot get the larvae to settle and metamorphose into adult anemones. If anyone has any ideas on this, I'd love to hear them!

We keep a decent stock of anemones for our work, and they are constantly throwing off pedal lacerate clones that we normally just throw in the trash. The way I see it, why not feed them to Berghia nudis instead? I'm new to the lab, and my labmates have two non-research aquaria in desperate need of my attention. As you might expect, both are overrun with Aiptasia and I think Berghia nudis will be a good solution for the smaller tank that contains no predators (just a lone clownfish and some softies). As for breeding potential, we maintain the anemones in plastic tubs on racks hooked up to a manifold. The flow is very low and there is no substrate or rock. I'm sure I could set up a separate tub, toss in all the spare Aiptasia anemones, and throw in some nudis. Hopefully they'd breed in there. Thoughts?
 
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In summary: I'm working on making genetically modified Aiptasia to help understand coral bleaching in more detail. Hopefully this understand will help researchers come up with ways to limit the impending loss of most of the world's coral reefs.

In more detail:
I'm studying cnidarian-symbiodinium (endosymbiotic algae) symbiosis using Aiptasia pallida as a model organism in Professor John Pringle's lab at Stanford University. Aiptasia has potential to be a good model organism for all the reasons that it is a pest in our tanks: it's hard to kill, easy to grow, tolerates sub-optimal conditions, and grows quickly. Plus, we can treat the anemones with antibiotics to "cure" them of their algal symbionts (AKA bleach them) and they can still survive by feeding. We're developing tools to do genetics research in Aiptasia, but the goal is to manipulate various genes in their genome and observe how these manipulations affect symbiosis. One of the major limitations to our work currently is that we cannot "close" the Aiptasia life cycle: we can get males and females to spawn, and we can keep the anemone larvae alive for over a month, but we cannot get the larvae to settle and metamorphose into adult anemones. If anyone has any ideas on this, I'd love to hear them!

We keep a decent stock of anemones for our work, and they are constantly throwing off pedal lacerate clones that we normally just throw in the trash. The way I see it, why not feed them to Berghia nudis instead? I'm new to the lab, and my labmates have two non-research aquaria in desperate need of my attention. As you might expect, both are overrun with Aiptasia and I think Berghia nudis will be a good solution for the smaller tank that contains no predators (just a lone clownfish and some softies). As for breeding potential, we maintain the anemones in plastic tubs on racks hooked up to a manifold. The flow is very low and there is no substrate or rock. I'm sure I could set up a separate tub, toss in all the spare Aiptasia anemones, and throw in some nudis. Hopefully they'd breed in there. Thoughts?
THAT is cool
 
In summary: I'm working on making genetically modified Aiptasia to help understand coral bleaching in more detail. Hopefully this understanding will help researchers come up with ways to limit the impending loss of most of the world's coral reefs.

In more detail:
I'm studying cnidarian-symbiodinium (endosymbiotic algae) symbiosis using Aiptasia pallida as a model organism in Professor John Pringle's lab at Stanford University. Aiptasia has potential to be a good model organism for all the reasons that it is a pest in our tanks: it's hard to kill, easy to grow, tolerates sub-optimal conditions, and grows quickly. Plus, we can treat the anemones with antibiotics to "cure" them of their algal symbionts (AKA bleach them) and they can still survive by feeding. We're developing tools to do genetics research in Aiptasia, with the goal to manipulate various genes in their genome and observe how these manipulations affect symbiosis. One of the major limitations to our work currently is that we cannot "close" the Aiptasia life cycle: we can get males and females to spawn, and we can keep the anemone larvae alive for over a month, but we cannot get the larvae to settle and metamorphose into adult anemones. If anyone has any ideas on this, I'd love to hear them!

We keep a decent stock of anemones for our work, and they are constantly throwing off pedal lacerate clones that we normally just throw in the trash. The way I see it, why not feed them to Berghia nudis instead? I'm new to the lab, and my labmates have two non-research aquaria in desperate need of my attention. As you might expect, both are overrun with Aiptasia and I think Berghia nudis will be a good solution for the smaller tank that contains no predators (just a lone clownfish and some softies). As for breeding potential, we maintain the anemones in plastic tubs on racks hooked up to a manifold. The flow is very low and there is no substrate or rock. I'm sure I could set up a separate tub, toss in all the spare Aiptasia anemones, and throw in some nudis. Hopefully they'd breed in there. Thoughts?
So you’re trying to make genetically altered super aiptasia?

I think I’ve heard this plot line before. It’s all done for good reasons but then one of the super aips gets out into the wild and repopulates to plague proportions and is now killing off the same coral that we’re trying to be saved in the first place. There’s no choice but to create a genetically altered super berghia to stave off the infestation and save the planet from total annihilation.

In all seriousness though, like @JVU said, that’s pretty cool.
 
B-rate movie plot? [emoji13] I'll be lucky if I can just find a few proteins and signal molecules involved in the establishment and breakdown of symbiosis...

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