Cucumber Fish Killing Toxin. My Experience and How To Deal

tyler1503 · May 30, 2014

Great write up! Having this near by will put my mind at ease a little bit when I get my cowfish

Squishie89 · May 30, 2014

Thank you everyone for the kind words, I do really appreciate it. And I am glad it is helpful to those of you thinking of keeping some of these potentially dangerous critters.

Eienna · May 31, 2014

I actually want to nominate this as a potential sticky.

SantaMonicaHelp · Jun 5, 2014

Can't imagine the panicky atmosphere of that initial water change. I guess it's good to always have a hospital tank on the ready, as well as enough water for a change so that your corals may survive.

Naiad · Jun 5, 2014

I will be subscribing to this as well. I am planning on adding a cucumber when I upgrade so any information will be helpful

tyler1503 · Jun 5, 2014

Hmmm. Just a thought, would it be better to drip acclimate the fish and corals to acclimate them to the QT tank? Or just put them straight in?
Just netting them and dumping them into new water would add more stress to an already stressed and sick fish but it would get them out quickly. Dripping them would eliminate the acclimation shock possibilities, but that's a much longer time being exposed to the cucumber toxins which is obviously bad too.

stunreefer · Jun 6, 2014

SantaMonicaHelp said:
as well as enough water for a change so that your corals may survive.

:thumb:

Ideally 100% of system volume. Unfortunately in events such as this our standard 20-30% water changes help very little.

SantaMonicaHelp · Jun 6, 2014

That would be quite an insurance plan to keep on hand for "just in case", especially for a big tank...

iretthepirate · Sep 17, 2014

I'm surprised the pipefish lived

SDguy · Sep 17, 2014

Back In the 90's I had a 2" sea apple (so cute) get stuck to a filter Intake. My fish were all dead within a couple hours. I think maybe a few lived after I found the Issue and added lots of carbon/changed water. I don't recall, It was a while ago.

Squishie89 · Sep 17, 2014

iretthepirate said:
I'm surprised the pipefish lived

I was really shocked too who was affected and who wasn't. No idea if it is due to something internally or diet or what.

Florida reefer · Sep 17, 2014

You're absolutely right about being prepared for water changes. Also, quite lucky that you were able to remove the cuke right away. Imagine the losses if it would have stayed in the display all night. My brother came home from work one day to find his reef decimated. Every fish, snail, h. Crab dead. Only the Kenya tree, and the ugliest mushrooms pulled through. He was devastated. After removing all rotting tissue, swishing rocks around and blasting all his sand with a hose attached to a power head, he did a handful of 100% water changes (flushes). Everything still kept dying. He pulled the rocks and started over, damsels kept dying. In the end he had to start over completely! Sand, rock, fish and coral. Tough lesson there, but one I'll never forget. Imho, just say no to cukes.

vlangel · Sep 17, 2014

I went away for 9 days and worried about my cuke. I put netting on both koralia even though it diminished the flow somewhat to prevent just such an occurrence.