The Sea Cucumber Forum

[RoyalGramma001]

A place do discuss  cool things about sea cucumbers and a place to talk about our sea cucumbers. Share your experience with them as I am curious. Also feel free to discuss care for them to help people interested in keeping these awesome inverts!Here’s my Yellow Sea cucumber I call Bart.

[RoyalGramma001]

I found them to be quite easy to keep, I basically do nothing but keep the tank clean, and they feed themselves. Anyone else have any cucumbers?

[Snow_Phoenix]

2 hours ago, RoyalGramma001 said:

I found them to be quite easy to keep, I basically do nothing but keep the tank clean, and they feed themselves. Anyone else have any cucumbers?

I've seen some small pretty pink/yellow ones on sale at my LFS, but I avoid them because the chances of them accidently being sucked up by my wavemaker, then stressing/dying (and subsequently releasing toxins which could crash a tank) is a worry for me. 

 

I've also seen some really huge black ones in some of the frag tanks and DTs at the store though. 

[RoyalGramma001]

Yeah, mine is stuck to a rock now on the opposite side of the tank shouldn’t be a problem getting sucked into the wave maker. I also found the expert only status of cucumbers to be undeserved as I am a beginner and they are very easy to keep.

[Snow_Phoenix]

37 minutes ago, RoyalGramma001 said:

Yeah, mine is stuck to a rock now on the opposite side of the tank shouldn’t be a problem getting sucked into the wave maker. I also found the expert only status of cucumbers to be undeserved as I am a beginner and they are very easy to keep.

I *think the reason some animals are listed 'expert only' are because they either either have notoriously poor survival rates in home aquaria (eg. difficult to feed, sensitive to parameter fluctuations etc.) or are toxic/poisonous when they get stressed out or die. Take the sea apple, for example. Beautiful and very tempting to keep due to its bold coloration. But also highly toxic and can wipe out a whole system if it dies on you. 

 

Too many people walk into the hobby without doing enough research about the animal they intend to keep, and end up hurting/killing them when it's avoidable, and perhaps the 'expert only' labels are to deter such cases (?). 🤔

 

^That's JMO. 

[RoyalGramma001]

Yes I completely agree, I read that it was actually very rare for when they die to poison the whole tank and only happens when they are sucked into an overflow or something that would spread it across the tank.

[mndfreeze]

Depends a lot on the species of cucumber too.  I had a baby tiger tail in my nano a billion years ago and while I rarely saw it, it left me nice clean sand poop pile presents everywhere.  Years later when I broke the tank down he hadn't even grown that much but was healthy.  That was my first reef tank and man did I make some ultra mistakes, crashed it twice, etc.  That little dude was a tank.  They apparently get super big though so eventually I prob would have had to get rid of him.

 

I think the filter feeder cucs are harder to keep for people, especially noobs.  All filter feeder critters have such wide varieties of food requirements (size of particles, type of food, etc) that it can be easy to starve one since most reef people try to keep their tank low nutrient.

 

I want another sand cleaning cuc but finding info on what cuc stays small for a nano is a pain to find.  Most websites and fish stores don't even list the species unless its a unique looking one like a tiger tail.

 

 

[RoyalGramma001]

This is my first tank and the cuc is a filter feeding species I found them not very hard to keep. Or I’m just incredibly lucky.

[mndfreeze]

How long have you had it?  Most inverts take months and sometimes years to starve to death.  Same reason why starfish are generally no-no's in anything other than huge tanks.  

 

Are you feeding phyto or other small particle filter feeder specific foods?  

[RoyalGramma001]

I’ve had him for 6 months now I don’t feed phyto because there is a lot of it in the tank. I have a starfish and it eats excess pellets.

[Tired]

Your tank has a lot of phytoplankton in it? That's pretty unusual. How'd you get it to do that? 

[RoyalGramma001]

Idk it is still alive and putting its filter feeders out, my guess is pure luck. Sorry if I’m really bad for help and advice. I’m new to the hobby and don’t know how to do many things. My local lfs said to just put it in. I use this sight mainly to learn new things from experienced hobbyists such as yourselves. I do not really know sorry if I am unhelpful.

[Tired]

There is not a lot of phytoplankton in your tank, I guarantee it. Your LFS lied to you about their care. Many places do. Filter-feeding animals like sea cucumbers need to be frequently fed certain-sized food particles, with the size of the particles depending on the animal species. I'd read up on sea apple care, they should be relatively similar. 

 

It being alive and having its feeders out only means it isn't dead yet. Many of the hard-to-feed inverts in the hobby can take months to starve to death, but they will, eventually, if not fed properly. Linkia starfish are an example- in all but massive tanks, they starve over the course of something like 6-8 months. Start feeding that weird banana some phytoplankton.

 

Some starfish are easy to feed, some aren't. What species is yours? If you aren't sure of species, what does it look like? 

[Tamberav]

I believe the yellow ones are somewhat easier to care for in an established tank. The main problem for critters like these is that they may randomly walk right into a pump and perish.

 

I had a green one (it's some sort of sea slug and not cucumber) that ate macro..it hitchhiked in and was pretty cool.

 

Here was mine:

 

 

[RoyalGramma001]

6 hours ago, Tired said:

There is not a lot of phytoplankton in your tank, I guarantee it. Your LFS lied to you about their care. Many places do. Filter-feeding animals like sea cucumbers need to be frequently fed certain-sized food particles, with the size of the particles depending on the animal species. I'd read up on sea apple care, they should be relatively similar. 

 

It being alive and having its feeders out only means it isn't dead yet. Many of the hard-to-feed inverts in the hobby can take months to starve to death, but they will, eventually, if not fed properly. Linkia starfish are an example- in all but massive tanks, they starve over the course of something like 6-8 months. Start feeding that weird banana some phytoplankton.

 

Some starfish are easy to feed, some aren't. What species is yours? If you aren't sure of species, what does it look like? 

I have a sand sifting sea star

I’ll buy some phytoplankton at the store.

[RoyalGramma001]

My bad if I do not know to much about sea cucumbers. I made this forum for other people to share the experience with sea cucumbers with others and so I could learn more. I will definitely get some bottles phytoplankton today, my lfs never told me they needed phytoplankton.

[mndfreeze]

You also want to get rid of the sand star.  They devour  all the microfauna (including the good kind you want) until your sand bed will be devoid of anything, then starve.  Takes about 6 months to a year.

 

Basically unless you have a huge many hundred gallon tank that has been established for years you won't be able to produce enough of the size and types of food to keep these animals going.

[Tamberav]

The cucumber might be ok.. especially if you feed him but that star is doomed 😞

 

Sorry to bring you bad news but sand sifting stars and linkia/fromia and such die prematurely in nanos. That's why you don't really see them on this forum. Those that do get them just keep replacing them since they are cheap and starfish starve slow.

 

I thought a tank dedicated to slugs, cucumbers, nudibranches would be cool. The easier ones obviously but still probably a bit difficult to pull off.

 

[RoyalGramma001]

Sea cucumber died woke up this morning and he wasn't moving and fell of a rock was dying not sure if still alive but not moving, I feel really bad as I was going to get phytofeast thid weekend to take proper care of him. I put him in a glass bowl with water to see if he would move and he didn't. Actually never mind I'm sorry he wasn't moving but now he is they are confusing sorry for not realizing it was still alive I am buying seaxhem reef phytoplankton to feed him

[RoyalGramma001]

Just bought some seachem reef phytoplankton from the store 

[Tired]

Great! Start feeding him daily. Multiple times a day would be best.

[RoyalGramma001]

Should I target feed him I have an eye dropper for a refractometer I never used can I use that

[Tired]

Yes. You have to start target feeding him so he won't starve. Read up on sea apple care, they should be pretty similar.