New nudibranch comes out of the rockwork

[DaJMasta]

Closing in on 3 weeks from adding live rock to the tank, I've found a new critter.  Spotted it just before teaching this morning on the rockwork and sucked it up in a turkey baster to sit in a holding bucket until I could get it under the microscope.

 

My best guess is some kind of Aeolid nudibranch, not a lettuce slug, not an aiptasia eating berghia (but maybe still a berghia of some sort?)  Live rock was from the Gulf of Mexico, off the coast of Florida.  It's mostly clear with yellow tips to the cerata and forward facing tentacles.
 

 

[DaJMasta]

No ID on the first one, but today I discovered another!  At this rate, there's at least one more yet to find....

 

 

[M. Tournesol]

Quickly locking on the internet makes me realize what a difficult task it will be to identify nudibranch. So mush specie an surely much more crypticc one with no encyclopedia classifying them easily and having photos. Lucky me, the only nudibranch I did have to identify from my aquarium what the pretty common vayssierea felis.

 

http://www.seaslugforum.net/specieslist.htm (look for "SUBORDER AEOLIDINA")

 

good luck 

[DaJMasta]

Luckily the page loads pretty fast, so everything from Suborder Aeolidina has been clicked on 😉

A few dead or missing pictures, and while there are a couple of sort of close ones, no direct match.  Closest I could get was with sort of ring shape bands of red down the back and no bumps on the rhinophores, or with an opaque white body and much more pronounced white tips on the end of the cerata - not close enough for me to consider it a positive ID.



....maybe I should just start from the top of the page....

[DaJMasta]

A third contender appears... what looked like a sponge in an unusual spot was in a different spot a few minutes later.