My HUGE pet sea hare

[Mister Scopas]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=14769203#post14769203 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by greenbean36191
...
As you've already figured out, the slug is laying eggs. This is generally not a good sign. Quite often this is a prelude to death for these animals.

Even without the eggs, the prognosis for this animal wouldn't be great. They're very short lived in the wild (about a year or two), and a fully grown one like this almost certainly doesn't have more than a couple of months left. Also, the fact that this species, which is usually uncommon in the hobby, has recently been showing up a lot is not a good sign either. Many species of sea hares gather in shallow water for a few weeks each year and then most of them die, possibly after mating. However, this makes them an easy target for collectors who may or may not realize they're dying animals. As a result, with some of the species, you see seasonal spikes in the numbers coming into the hobby- exactly what I've seen over the past 2 weeks or so with this species.

The problem is that the collectors who gather livestock from the sea to resell for the aquarium market aren't often interested in marine ecology. Very often the people who actually get their feet wet are low paid workers who get paid as bounty hunters for every animal that they bring in for their employer. Their interest is in maximizing their pay for the day, without paying much (if any) regard for the success of the species that they're collecting in the wild. Their employers' interest is maximizing the number of animals that they can sell to the trans-shippers and marine distributors, who in turn are interested primarily in what they can sell to the pet stores.

As a result, adults that are near death and have come ashore to reproduce get harvested for resale before they can complete the life cycle by propagating their species. Interrupting the propagation of the species in the wild is a really bad idea. Its like capturing the penguins before they're allowed to make the March of the Penguins for mating season, or capturing turtles as they come ashore to lay eggs. Its good for the collector, its good for his boss, and its good for the pet store, but its bad for the species.

Greenbean, thanks for chiming in. This is a good example of why its important for us as responsible reefkeepers to educate ourselves about the hobby, so we'll know what's good to buy for our tanks and what should be left in the sea.

 

[thegrun]

Spinach would be better for him (it looks like a he) than Romaine if he will eat it.

 

[Kraylen]

Amazing.

 

[Juruense]

Romaine lettuce absolutely has nutritional value, its the iceberg lettuce that does not...

 

[greenbean36191]

I really don't think collecting the animals from aggregations is as much of a management issue as it is unfortunate for the hobbyists that buy the animals.

This species and most of the others that gather in these aggregations are circumtropical, so their range is huge. When they do aggregate there can be literally hundreds of thousands of animals in one area, with only a few hundred at most being collected. Even if these aggregations are mating related, (which is still unknown) each slug lays hundreds of thousands of eggs and the vast majority of them won't survive to adulthood, largely because of competition.

It may sound strange, but in species that use what's called r-selection (live fast, die young, make lots of babies), removing a large part of the breeding population often has little to no negative effect on population density. Basically what happens is that the removal of reproducing adults is compensated for by increased survival of larvae from the remaining individuals.

BTW, it's an "it." All sea slugs are hermaphrodites, though they aren't self-fertilizing.

 

[boggerscott]

I was about to make a "know it all" comment. but then I saw ur occupation. "so u probly do know it all." thanks for all the info it was very intersting.

 

[ghandidawgg]

This is insane, I had a seahare in the past but never ever seen one this big. cool. like others said, don't know if I would hold him with my bare hands... hehe... cool pics

 

[basssnake]

So, Is this a regular Sea Hare? Do they knock corals over if they are big?