Are Sea Cucumbers right for your tank?

Coralsdaily

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Are Sea Cucumbers right for your tank?
2020-09-29 stevenliu9
Hello Everyone, welcome back to my blog. Steven here! Thank you so much for taking time to enjoy the topics we discuss here.

Feel free to skip the read if you rather watch the video


Today we continue our “Is _____ right for your tank” series by discuss sea cucumber. Sea cucumbers are part of the echinoderm family. Echinoderm means spiky skin. members of this family include sea cucumbers, starfish, and urchins, all of which possess “spiky skin”. But many other marine creature may also contain spiky skins, so what is common among starfish, sea cucumber, and urchins? The answer lies in their cross section. If you are to view these creature from the angle of their mouth and slice their bodies from this view, you’d find them all to possess a pentagonal structure of various outlines.

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Urchins & starfish both belong in the echinoderm family

We will discuss starfish and urchins fitness to your tank in a separate chat. Today let’s focus on sea cucumbers. Unlike their urchin and starfish armored relatives, the sea cucumber typically do not have calcified armor deposit above their skin layer, leaving them vulnerable to predators, extreme temperature, and water pressure.

Although they lack the protective armor that urchins and starfishes do, they possess something even more deadly- their internals. When stressed, sea cucumbers can expel their entire digestive tract, which I would assume is nasty tasting, to deter predators. the digestive tract is very potent and can wipe out all creatures in its vicinity. Hence the term “nuke” you may hear some hobbyists call it. Yes, cucumbers possess the potential of “nuking” your entire tank, wiping all living organisms off including fish, other inverts, and corals off.

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A Tigertail sea cucumber ingest food from its feeding tentacles

The is only a handful of sea cucumber species that are popular in today’s aquarium trade, and all of them stay in relatively managible size for average aquarists’ tanks. There are two main types: those who swipe, and those who catch. The tiger tail sea cucumber (there are a dozen or more different species with this name) is a good representative of the “swiping kind” as they spill out their feeding tentacles, capture small objects and ingest into their system. The sea apple on the other hand, is a good representative of the “capturer” as it waves its tentacles in the water column in attempt to capture food in the flow.

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Sea Apple capturing food from the water column

Given the specific feeding preferences between the two types of sea cucumbers, if you are considering either of them for your tank, I suggest you ask yourself these questions:
For Food swiping cucumbers:
  1. Do you currently have a fine-grain sand bed? Yes
  2. Is the tank established enough for the sand bed to nurture a good amount of micro organism? Yes
  3. Do you have any creature (fish or inverts) with an appetite for sea cucumber? No
  4. Do you have powerhead/return syphons close to the sandbed level with any risk of sucking the cucumber in? No
If your answer matches the ones above, then you may consider adding a sand sifting cucumber at your own risk. I will also add- Sea cucumbers do not eat poop, algae, or detritus. In fact, not creature sold in the store eat poop or detritus, there is no nutritional value in either. What sea cucumbers really eat is the micro organisms living on the surface of your sugar grain size sand bed. Hence they ingest the sand to strip the sand clean of it. So if you have another creature in the tank who also does the same thing, such as a sand sifting goby, you may want to think twice as they will be competing for food.

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The yellow cucumber is another commonly seen available in the hobby require food dosing in the water column.

For Food Catching cucumbers:
  1. Do you dose microscopic food into your water column to supplimental feeding daily? Yes
  2. Can your filtration system handle the frequent, and heavy feeding into the water column? Yes
  3. Do you have any creature (fish or inverts) with an appetite for sea cucumber? No
  4. Do you have powerhead/return syphons anywhere in the tank with any risk of sucking the cucumber in? No
If your answer matches the above, then you may consider adding a food catching cucumber like the sea apple. Please note, you will NOT be having any wave maker in your tank. Sea apple + wave maker = disaster for your tank. Unlike the other type of cucumber who typically don’t venture far off the sand bed. The food catching type will travel all over the place.

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Some sea cucumbers can become massive. But most of the ones available to purchase won’t get to that level.

So, are sea cucumbers right for your tank? Well, if you are well equipped with all the nutritional needs describe above, I think you will be well rewarded with a very cool, alien looking creature that when in the open, is definitely an attention grabber. Please just make sure you have all the safety precautions in place to prevent the cucumbers being trapped or sucked into any water moving machines.

Have you ever had, or currently owning sea cucumbers in your tank? Comment in the bottom if you like to share your experiences with them!
 

Vette67

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I bought a tiger tail cucumber a few years ago. Interesting to watch. Eats dirty gravel and poops clean gravel. These get big. Well over a foot long. Then I had 2. I only purchased one. Then I had 3. I traded 2 to an LFS. I still have one (I have no idea if it’s the “original”). And waiting for it to split again. So they are great, but they are prolific. They stay on the sand bed, so no worry about getting sucked into a power head.

So I like them, but it is something to consider, because the tiger tail cucumbers reproduce easily.
 

MabuyaQ

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Great write up but I think you are mixing up sand sifting sea cucumbers and sandsifting seastars when talking about what they eat. Holothurids do eat detritus, bacteria and microalgae by sifting those out of sediments, so efficiently that it limits the other microfauna that feeds on this as well.
 
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Coralsdaily

Coralsdaily

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I bought a tiger tail cucumber a few years ago. Interesting to watch. Eats dirty gravel and poops clean gravel. These get big. Well over a foot long. Then I had 2. I only purchased one. Then I had 3. I traded 2 to an LFS. I still have one (I have no idea if it’s the “original”). And waiting for it to split again. So they are great, but they are prolific. They stay on the sand bed, so no worry about getting sucked into a power head.

So I like them, but it is something to consider, because the tiger tail cucumbers reproduce easily.
Amazing that your cucumbers like to split. Any photos to show off? I think they are really cool animals and seriously under-rated.
 
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Coralsdaily

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Liked and subbed. I dont have any cucumbers now as I removed all my sand.
I made a brief attempt keeping a cucumber in my bare bottom thinking they can still find some detritus, well as I see it shrank in size I knew that wouldn't be possible so I switched it up to one of my sandy bed ones.
 
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Coralsdaily

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Great write up but I think you are mixing up sand sifting sea cucumbers and sandsifting seastars when talking about what they eat. Holothurids do eat detritus, bacteria and microalgae by sifting those out of sediments, so efficiently that it limits the other microfauna that feeds on this as well.
You might be right, and I agree that they are very effective sweepers. Even though they move slowly to human eyes, overnight they can pretty much cover the entire surface as I wake up to sandy poop balls as evidence! really great help in keeping the sand clear and bright though!
 

Vette67

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Amazing that your cucumbers like to split. Any photos to show off? I think they are really cool animals and seriously under-rated.
Here’s a photo from a few months ago, crawling up the glass in my fuge. That’s my one remaining. It keeps my fuge gravel clean.
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Coralsdaily

Coralsdaily

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I have 5 sea cucumbers that I caught myself in bay ,, 3 in my main tank and 2 in my invert tank no problems as of yet, and they are good add to my cuc

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Where (which bay) did you collect them if you don't mind me ask? I am landlocked in WI so never a chance I can have the pleasure of collecting my own. I used to live in Belize and really missed seeing them in the wild!
 

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I have a Yellow Sea cucumber. After moving him 3 times he finally was happy and feeding regularly. He recently split. It looked like a balloon animal rolled in the middle. The end with the original mouth has fed a few times (often feeds at night) and the back end hasn’t fed yet (that I caught). Haven’t moved too much - still on the same rock just shift positions.

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Vette67

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nice and chubby! is he the only resident in the fuge?
Yes. It shares the fuge with chaeto, pods and some bristle worms. I had the originals in my 180. In one of my tear downs to catch my fish to treat for ich (that could be a whole other discussion in itself), I removed them from my display tank. They are usually shy and you don’t see much of them, except their head poking out to eat the sand from under a rock, which is why I took that picture. But I wanted the cucumber in a tank I could contain, and not have to tear down 200 pounds of live rock to unbury them. So that’s why I moved it to my fuge. Even now, I can’t find it. But I can see the poop sand piles, so I know which rock it’s hiding under.
 

radiata

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Cucumbers - you pay your money and you take your chances...

I've been in the hobby 45-something years, and I've always had to have a number of echinoderms in my tank. I love starfish, urchins, cucumbers, sand dollars, etc. and had never had a "Cuke Nuke". Until 6/29/20 that is. I had two black cucumbers in my DT for literally many years. At 1PM I fed my fish and all was well. I passed by the tank at 4:30 PM and saw many dead fish. I lost 18 in all, many of which I'd had for many years.

I whacked the tank with a lot of carbon to get the toxicity out. (Three days later many stony corals were burned due to the instant clarity of the water. And, a week later my tank's Aiptasia production was in full swing because I'd lost all my Butterflies.)

What killed the cuke? A powerhead? Probably. Powerheads are capable of shredding anemones, but cukes have no extremities that could get sucked into the powerhead and thus shredded. What does happen is that a cuke gets too close to the powerhead and sucked onto it. If the powerhead is on continuously, the cuke is immobilized there. It can't move or feed and it dies there of starvation. And, you've been Cuke Nuked...

Still want a cucumber? My second black cucumber survived the event. Want it? Let me know and you can come over and pick it up.

Does your LFS or on-line invert supplier care? No, if they'll sell you a cucumber they're just in it to make a buck. Should you buy anything at all from them? Consider their business ethics, and then make your own choice...

Alternatively, find a vendor that can supply you with a nice smallish sand dollar.
 

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