Sea Cucumber

July 11, 2004
The sea cucumber cleans the sand by eating it, removing whatever nutrients are attached, and ejecting it from the other end of its body. The hole in the center of this picture shows the exit end of this simple creature. The rest of his body is hidden under the open brain coral.

Tonight, the cucumber is shedding its skin, or at least, a layer of its skin. Not knowing that this might happen, I naturally headed to the books, where I learned that both healthy and unhealthy sea cucumbers may shed skin. And not just skin. They are also prone to “that nasty little habit of evisceration when a stressed animal sends its guts, gonads and potentially every part of its entrails out of its anus or mouth, depending upon which way the wind blows.” The follow-up to this activity is the regeneration of all these organs. The danger for the aquarium is the pollution all this causes. The book advises that you promptly remove the expelled items. Ok.....hope it is done shedding by bed time!

I finally found an internet site that has seaweed available for sale. Since most marine aquarists are interested only in the animals, not plants, very few people have seaweed, and I’ve only seen two species available locally. Both of these I have bought, and you may recall that a month ago I was worried the red bubble one might be unsafe, and I relegated it to the quarantine tank. I have since been able to get it identified and learned that it is safe to keep in the main tank, except that the tang would consume it all, so I have it in the refugium and pick a stem from time to time to give to the tang. Anyway, I’d like to have lots of different types of seaweed for visual interest, and also because with enough thriving seaweed, the tang, in theory, would eat a balanced diet and they would grow fast enough to keep him happy and well fed.

Speaking of food, I’ve been worrying about the overfeed/underfeed problem. My tendency is to overfeed--can’t let my citizens starve! And since some of the corals need to be fed, too, it can get complicated distributing the evening meal to everyone equitably. If I feel someone got left out, I grab more food and sling it over. This overfeeding is probably the root cause of my ongoing cyanobacteria algae problem. So I’m really trying to cut back. The corals aren’t supposed to be fed every night--every 4th night is about right, so “they” say. But since I couldn’t keep track of whose turn it was, I had been solving it by giving a little every night.

Did some more reorganizing of the live rock, trying to get better spacing and surfaces to put corals on. I think I’m finally happy with it (until next week, anyway). Of course, the corals grow best if they are undisturbed, you aren’t supposed to keep rearranging. But until you find exactly the right spot where the light is right and the current is right, they aren’t happy and don’t open up properly to feed.

The little guy in the picture is my lawnmower blenny. Cute, isn't he? Next to him on the right is xenia coral, and on the left, the green bubbly stuff is ricordia.