New Sea Cucumber

[Thomas898]

Picked up this guy (holothurian edulis) at LFS today, couldn't resist the colouring, and the clean sand that comes with! Any one had experience with keeping these and have any helpful tips to share? I am already aware of the hazards that cucumbers pose to tanks, so please don't feel the need to mention this

[The Aquarist]

These things often starve in aquariums, because there isn't enough food (detritus, and stuff like that) in the sandbed. If you have a mature, well established, tank, it should do well. They also can get up to a foot long, which is quite big. For an animal that size, it must need a lot of food to survive! Unfortunately, in the long run, these things often starve.

http://www.advancedaquarist.com/2003/1/inverts

Good luck!

[Thomas898]

Thanks for the link, very helpful info. I currently run a very small CUC (2 nassarius, 2 scutus shield, 1 tuxedo urchin and 1 pep shrimp) so there is a huge amount of algae and detritus build up as the Nassarius and Pep are the only thing that go into the sand bed. It's around 3 inches now in 19 gal, and I am planning on upgrading to a larger tank in a few months so I will move the CUC to that.

 

Also just rescaped tank to allow more access to sand bed. Since introducing it was eating the sand quite well then climbed up into the rock work and hasn't come back down, is that normal?

[The Aquarist]

Hey,

I actually have no experience with this species of cucumber, but at the lfs, they had one, and that was on the glass near the top. I'd say its normal. Just make sure he is eating, and you can verify this if you see its poop, which will look like little "noodles" made out of sand.

Sea cucumbers are really cool. I have a Colochirus robustus in a 10 gallon all by himself, and I feed him lots of phytoplankton. However, that is a filter feeder, completely different from your cucumber, which is primarily a detritavore. Filter feeding cucumbers, such as the sea apples, the pink and green's, and the small yellow one's which I have are harder to take care of that the sand-sifting ones.

Good luck! I love sea cucumbers.