Looking for Sea Hare Feeding Ideas

[brianacooper11]

Whiskers O'Hare is a dolabella auricularia sea hare that I keep for pleasure, not algae control. To keep him fed, I keep the tank (28 gallon nano) high in nitrates, phosphates and lights to encourage algae growth on everything, which he keeps up with, plus Nouri sheets daily. I'm upgrading first to a 55 gallon tank, then a 200 gallon DT, with the 55 becoming a refugium.

When I upgrade I'd like to find a way to keep him fed without keeping the nitrates and phosphates so high, and without the Nouri, which is very messy. I have some kind of algae scrubber or reactor in mind, but before I go too far down the path of devising a system, I wanted to ask folks what they've had success feeding an auricularia on, and what algae they've grown in a refugium (don't necessarily have to be the same thing, looking for lots of data at this point). FYI macroalgae is troublesome, as he doesn't have a mouth so much as a rough cat-like tongue (radula), and when he 'scrapes' macroalgae, a lot of it ends up in the tank and then my protein skimmer. He seems to do great with diatoms and hair algae.

Thanks!

 

[thegrun]

The problem is that the hare is still going to produce a lot of waste for your 55 gallon tank no matter what you feed it so keeping your nitrates and phosphates low until you move to the 200 is going to be very difficult; they are messy inefficient eaters.

 

[BPK REEF]

We live in the FL Keys and have a lot of sea hares in our front yard during the algae season.
We have several tanks that are reverse osmosis water based but one that is fed with water that is pumped in from a pump on our dock. It's super healthy and always full of macroalgae as the ocean is. You're welcome to park your sea hare in that tank while you make the transition.


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