Sea Cukes

[Toadfish]

Hey I got this hitchhiker I IDed it as a sea cucumber its aboot 1cm long has a black body with white tentacles (for lack of a better word for those things it uses to feed), basically i want to know is it going to be harmful to corals or other inverts. I know it would be if it nukes itself but lets hope it doesn't. Oh and if anyone has an idea of the species or what size it will get that would be great, thanks.

 

[steelhealr]

Need pix. Cukes can invert their GI system and poison a tank. It's always a risk. SH

 

[FishOwner]

Need a pic to help you ID.
As a general rule, the more colorful the cuke is the more deadly it is. While all cukes can pose a problem, the degree is going to depend on a couple of things. Like what species the cuke is, how big is the tank, how big is the cuke and how quickly you remove the cuke if it pukes it's gut or dies. I used to have the brown atlantic cukes. They did a good job and all, never had a problem. Then the hurricanes hit my area and during the first one, one of the cukes lost his guts and I removed him as soon as I saw it. (Even though they can recover from this, I did not have a tank to devote to him and was having other problems because of the lack of power, hurricane above my head, etc..so I destroyed him right away). No problem. The second hurricane hit and the other cuke died and even though I removed his body as soon as I saw it, I do believe that this was one of the reasons my tank bombed.
So the moral of the story? Keep a watch on it, if you have problems with a power outage, watch it even more and if you decide to not keep it, take it to the store and sell it back to them. Someone will want it! IF you keep it and it pukes, then remove it ASAP and run some fresh carbon in your tank, discard the carbon after a day too.
Good luck!

 

[Lynden]

I would love to be able to keep a sea cucumber, they are wonderful animals really, but you can say goodbye to every animal in the tank if it gets chewed up by a powerhead/filter intake.

The advice that FishOwner gave is what I would use. One good thing about getting a colourful cucumber for a hitchhiker is that you can make a bundle off them

-Lynden

 

[Aquascaper]

Sea Cucumbers are usually tentacle-less, Nudibranches are the ones with tentacles.......

a picture would help with the ID