Clavelina picta

(Verrill, 1900)

Busy Sea Squirt, Painted Tunicate

Range: Western Atlantic Ocean: Southern Florida, Bahamas, and the Caribbean.

Natural Environment: Inhabits hard substrates, usually under overhangs and sometimes found attached to gorgonian, sea whips, black coral and sponges.

Aquarium Suitability: Not purposely collected for the home aquarium trade.

Forms clusters and rarely ever seen in the home aquarium trade/available for purchase.

Yet may, yet extremely rarely, inadvertently occur on coral specimens/live rock from areas of their collection.

Requires special attention to feeding requirements. For those that want to maintain them, they require numerous feedings per day of live and/or preserved commercial phytoplankton/zooplankton products or that of animal and plant powders that produce suspended products in the bulk water and/or bacteria laden waters.

Proper placement is also quite important. Generally, most prefer low light and do better with indirect light and gentle water movement.

Besides being difficult to maintain, they have a very short life span, usually about one year and sometimes far less. Only those willing to provide for their demanding level of care should attempt keeping them in closed systems. Actually, 99.9% should be left in the wild.

Taxonomy:

Kingdom: Animalia

Phylum: Chordata

Class: Ascidiacea

Order: Aplousobranchia

Family: Clavelinidae

Genus: Clavelina

FYI: Shown here for identification only.

Sometimes found in clusters as shown in the Bob Fenner photo.