The Sea Hare (Aplysia Sp

I would not recommend Aplysia. Most members of that genus are pretty big and only a few of them are tropical. The reason you hear a lot of conflicting reports on the diet is that most people in the hobby think "sea hare" refers to one species when in fact there's 30 or so. They all have different diets. Usually, Aplysia is described as a macroalgae feeder, but I've always seen them in areas where they seemed to be going for microalgae.

Is there a specific type of algae you're looking to control?
 
I have hair algae that started getting out of control when
I upgraded my lighting.

I have noticed that this animal started showing up in the lfs
in my area (as well online ) in the past couple of months
they all look similer in apperance.
 
Dolabella is the one most common in the hobby, and also the one usually recommended for hair algae. They eat it very fast, so I wouldn't consider it a long term resident. If you try to keep it you'll need to supplement its diet after it eats all the algae. Some people have success with nori or various types of macroalgae, and others don't. Rather than trying to keep it fed, I would plan to pass it on to someone else with an algae problem. It's just a bandaid though, so if you don't control your nutrients the algae will come right back after the slug is gone.
 
I wouldn't recomend getting a sea hare. I had one and they are great for HA, but when its food is gone they tend to "shoot" ink everywhere. I run carbon and phos remover 24/7 so nothing detremental happend but they sure stink when they die. I tend to stay away from any sea slug like creatures from the horror stories I have heard and expeirenced myself. The sea apple was a doosie lost everything in a 55 reef tank once!
 
The ink is just a soup of amino acids- nothing to be worried about. Some people pay a lot of money to fill their tanks with that stuff. :lol: They also need red algae to make it, so assuming they've already been ticked off a few times before you add them to the tank and you don't feed them red algae once their in there the inking shouldn't be an issue.
 
Has anyone kept any seahares long term? I bought one, and I like it a lot. It does not seem to be eating hair algae, it seems to be rasping algae from the glass. I'd can grow it macroalgae, or offer it something else, just would like to know how to keep it going. I understand there are many species. Any way I can ID mine and find out what is best to feed it? Until I learn more, I guess I'll offer a variety...
 
I've kept a few species about as long-term as you could hope for. With the exception of Dolabella none of them will live more than a year or two. I've kept Dolabrifera, though I have no clue what it ate, and Stylocheilus and Bursatella, which both went for cyano and diatoms on the sand. On the short term I've kept a few different species of Aplysia, all of which were fed Gracilaria, which is what the U of Miami Aplysia Resource Facility grows theirs on.

If you have a pic, they're fairly easy to ID, or you could browse through "Superfamily Aplysioida" here: http://www.seaslugforum.net/specieslist.cfm
 
Thanks, greenbean. Do you know where I can get Gracilaria? I saw that marinedepot has it on their page, but it has been unavailable for months...

I am working on trying to ID it from that page, very helpful...
 
I got mine from a local reefer, so I don't know of a whole lot of places that carry it. Floridapets.com used to carry it, but I don't know if they still do or how the price compares to other sources.
 
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