Weird question, I know, but... can sea hares back up?

[Coelli]

I added a sea hare (dolabella) last weekend in the hopes it would eat lobophora (it doesn't). I meant to throw it in my fuge today with some algae pellets while I tried to find a new home for it but didn't get a chance. Welp, he found a hole in one of my rocks and crammed himself down it somehow - you can barely see the very end of his butt. Only problem is that hole leads directly to my yellow watchman and randall's pistol's burrow. There's one other hole he could exit from down there, but no telling how much room there is under the rock, whether he can get to the other egress, or what the pair will do to him while he's down there.

...please tell me he can throw it in reverse and I'm not going to have to pull the tank apart to get him (or his corpse) out. I'm not even sure he has room for water to get through his gills, it's such a tight fit.

*sigh*

 

[pagojoe]

That's a good question. I've seen them jammed into some tight spots in the wild. If they can't back up, or do some sort of body contortions, the mortality rate from choosing bad hiding places would have to be pretty high.


Don

 

[Coelli]

Well, he did not move at all and is still there 12 hours later; unfortunately I have to go to work. Hopefully if he's dead he won't pollute the tank before I can get home and extract him. This is not good!

 

[Calappidae]

If it eases your mind, they don't nuke a tank that easily. Carbon usually catches the toxins before any harm is done. I had one starve in my 125 with no carcass retrieved, nothing else happened. If your tank was small like a 10 gallon, with no filteration then you'd might see a fish lose or two, but nothing to the level of a boxfish or cucumber.

But I would atempt to give him a hand out of his sticky situation.

 

[Coelli]

I left work early and it hadn't moved - so tonight, after about 24 hours since it went in we determined it was dead and managed to extract it with the 24" curved hemostats (love those things). It was definitely dead. My boyfriend did the extraction and said it was really wedged in there. Must have gotten stuck. And you're right, everything else in the tank seemed fine. Phew! Feel bad that it died though.