Berghia Help Please

May 28, 2002
From: Leslea

I currently have a 5.5-gallon set up with probably a dozen or two dozen Berghia. They are always laying eggs in the tank so we really have no idea how many are in there. Currently there is about 4 lbs of live rock in the tank with a multitude of copepods and bristle worms. Also there appears to be severely small green and white brittle stars. Only other things in the tank is a couple cerith (sp?) snails. There was a bumblebee snail but he was evicted yesterday. My husband swears there is a small crab in there but I have yet to see it. Now to the problem, in the last couple of days a few of the Berghia appear to have damage to their back ends and cerata keep falling off in the tank. Looks almost like something is trying to bite the back end of the Berghia, which makes me think there just might be a crab. This only started about 2 or 3 days ago. We have started to pull some of the more damaged Berghia out of the tank to put into smaller cubes to observe them. All water quality is fine in the tank, we do frequent water changes by swapping water with a 30-gallon tank with excellent water quality and the temp is between 76-79 degrees. Has anyone experienced crabs or brittle stars attacking Berghia? Today I saw a bristle worm come out of the rock and go to one of the injured Berghia that had bad damage on its back end. When I took it out of the tank, a lot of the cerata fell off. Any help is greatly needed.
Thank you in advance.
Leslea

lesleaoh@aol.com

Leslea, 2002 (May 28) Berghia Help Please. [Message in] Sea Slug Forum. Australian Museum, Sydney. Available from http://www.seaslugforum.net/find/7043

Dear Leslea,
We'll have to see if anyone has experienced a similar event. As you will probably have seen on the Forum, dropping of cerata, can be a defensive strategy in some aeolids. I suspect something is irritating them enough to cause them to cast off cerata, so a crab would be a reasonable thought, though I am not sure why it has only just started to do so. I guess a bristle worm would also be a candidate for villain. All I can say is keep an eye out and see if you can catch the culprit.
Cheers,
Bill Rudman

Rudman, W.B., 2002 (May 28). Comment on Berghia Help Please by Leslea. [Message in] Sea Slug Forum. Australian Museum, Sydney. Available from http://www.seaslugforum.net/find/7043

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