I’m a sucker for books on breeding marine organisms and at one point I had actually contemplated breeding these little nudibranchs for fun (profit questionable).  Much to my surprise, a blog post on this this subject popped up this afternoon that mentioned a book on breeding berghia nudibranchs is now available on Premium Aquatics (an Advanced Aquarist sponsor). For those new to the hobby, Berghia nudibranchs are small whitish nudibranchs that chow down on one of the scourges of our tanks: Aiptasia.

According to Premium Aquatics’ page about the book:

The secret to successfully breeding the Berghia nudibranch all lies in the breeding system itself. Follow a step-by-step tutorial on building a proven breeding system that is low in daily maintenance so that you can spent your time feeding and shipping your Berghia! The book covers three levels of breeding systems from hobbyist to a light commercial system.

The system(s) are reported to be easy to build and most components can be sourced from your local fish store.

We published an article titled Breeder’s Net: Easy Berghia Nudibranch Propagation by Justin Credabel on breeding them in our November 2008 issue of Advanced Aquarist and it’s worth a read if you want to learn a bit about their biology and some basic breeding techniques.

I did a bit of digging for more information about this book and learned that it was published April 4, 2011 and that it is a CreateSpace published book, meaning the author has decided to not go the traditional publishing route and instead self-published the book using CreateSpace’s self-publishing platform.  Good for him.  Incidentally, we’ve also used CreateSpace for all of our books as well and we’ve always been quite happy with the quality of the book.

The book itself is 140 pages in length and features a color cover and black and white interior photos.  The table-of-contents states that the book covers care, shipping, marketing, breeding systems (hobbyist and light commercial) and maintenance, and Aiptasia as well (your little nudibranchs will need a food source of course).

It’s available for $19.99 (plus S&H) from Premium Aquatics.  If you’re interested in breeding these nudibranchs, definitely check it out.

(via Reefbuilders)