about those cukes

[iamsporkie]

i received two cucumbers as part of my package and a couple questions.

what color are they normally? right now, one is black and the other is really green. the green one looks sick, but i dont know what theyre supposed to look like!

what do they eat? am i supposed to supplement their diet?

right now, they seem to cling to the rock or the glass, arent they supposed to be in the sand? should i worry?

thanks for the info!!

 

[Whisperer]

They come in different colors. The green one is not necessarily sick based on its color. They are great sand cleaners. They ingest fine sand and poop them in clean pellets. They venture into rockworks and glass occasionally but do not stay there long. As long as you have live sand, they do not need diet supplement. Mine have never really eaten anything other than sand (or whatever is there in the sand )

 

[cgh38]

I got 4 cukes , 2 black ones and 2 green ones with my TBS package a couple of days ago , and they are not moving at all, I thought maybe theyr'e dead so I moved them around a little with my net and they started to move, 2 are on top of a rock and 2 on the sand, maybe that's their nature to just sit there, I don't know my wife is not to crazy about them she says" they don't look pretty"

 

[iamsporkie]

whew! thats good to hear that green is another color they come in! they do look very interesting and i hope they hit the sand soon!

thanks

 

[hdtran]

I had 3, one brown, one brown/white, one yellowish. They hung around for 2-3 days before becoming active. The yellow one tried to eat a gorgonian, and probably poisoned itself. It barfed its guts, and died shortly after. The brown/white decided he liked the rocks better than the sand, and climbed up into the rockwork. After a while, I think he convinced a clam to close up on him. Had a big gash on its side, then, also died. The brown one seems to have a few more IQ points (single digits, as opposed to negative digits) than the others, and is now actively eating and pooping substrate. More active at night than day.


I do have several hitchhiking cucumbers in the rock. One is a wandering cucumber, about the size of a gherkin, the others appear to be filter feeding cucumbers (stick tentacles out in water; suck tentacles). Very cool.

I managed to extract one dead cucumber, the other one was dismembered by the serpent stars. Water quality (at least, ammonia/nitrites/nitrates) never moved.

 

[landlord]

One of mine managed to get inside of the filter screen on a power head and turned himself into a big mess. He met the garbage disposal that night

-landlord

 

[seacritter]

I received 2 in my package and 2 as hitchikers a few months ago.
All 4 seem to make there way thru the live rock and not spend much time at all in the sand. They have gotten quite large so I figure they are eating pretty good. The only time I really see them is at night with the flashlight. One of them is a cool yellow color and the other 3 are a blackish gray. The largest one is over 8 inches long.