sea hare

[markcerm]

Hey everyone, i just bought a sea hare and when i put it in my tank, it buried itself in the sand. that was a couple of hours ago and it's still there... what does this mean??? do they do that normally? never had one before, just a little nervous.... any feedback would be appreciated, thanks

[PaulieWalnuts]

it could just be nervous...are the lights still on...and how is your ph....also what do you use for flow...i know when i had a sea hare they would always get stuck in my power heads so be careful with that. they do clean great though.

[BuddhaKiss]

When did you put it in your tank? Mine buried itself when the lights were on but as soon as the lights went out, it began foraging. Check on it at night to see if its foraging. BTW, they do a great job of controlling HA, But will need to supplement their feeding after the HA is gone.

[tydtran]

Watch out for it getting into powerheads.

[crvz]

powerheads and seahares can be an issue... I've had one ink the tank from it before (but with no ill effects). I do believe they're nocturnal, so check the tank out at night like others have recommended.

[plancton]

My experience with sea hares;

I bought one that was almost 5 inches and quite fat, it was one of the hairy ones. It was an algae eating machine, the best job ever, and got its head so stuck in my SEIO that I had to choose between breaking the powerhead and the sea hare. The powerhead won.

Then after a year, I am having an incredible algae problem, so I bought another one of the hairy sea hare, and this one was about 2 inches. It didnt move much, hid, and after 2 months missing and no poop to be found whatsoever as well as algae not dying then I declared him dead.

And so I just bought 6 sea hares of the spotted ones, size between 1.5 and 2 inches. I haven't seen 1 of them. 3 remain almost not moving, I haven't seen them eating after 2 days, and one is upside down.

1 is moving a lot and eating a lot and this happens to be the bigger one, I heard the spotted variety are very hardy, but I'm guessing some of them could die for unknown reasons, yet maybe half of them will survive and thats enough to grow and eat all of the algae.

I advice people buying sea hares to buy them as big as you can, small ones always start slow and might die, big ones are much more active and hardy.

I keep the powerhead shot down, only flow is from the return pump and the tunze wavebox, the wavebox is hard to reach because of its shape and it would turn down if something is blocking its way which would be hard because the current would easily toss the sea hares away from its danger.

[markcerm]

yikes, large sea hares can get stuck in the power heads? it is quite large and i found it eating the HA this morning on the top of the rocks. Quite a bit of HA is missing, so i'm assuming he was active all night. He is now sleeping behind the rocks, so all is good for now. I do have supplemental algae that i bought for when the HA runs out. I'm very concerned about the possibility of his inking the tank though. Thank you all very much for your input, it's helped a lot. Not sure how i can keep him away from the powerheads though...
i currently have a lot of flow in the tank, 3 powerheads currently running, the snails are shaken by the current while eating algae off the front of the glass... it is only a 46 gallon tank. i hope to upgrade soon though. Again, thanks for the input.

[plancton]

Yes even if the sea hare is big the head remains relatively small thats the part that got stuck, really stuck, but it never released ink in the tank, it only did when I took him out and started to pull hard.
Shut your powerheads off, find another way or they'll die.

By the way, I've heard they can be supplemented with nori once food runs out, is this true?

[plancton]

bump

[J.russell]

Mine is out mostly at night. I have woke up the past 2 mornings to find him in my sump though...haha. In the skimmer section actually.

[plancton]

will they eat nori or something once algae runs out?, I mean I wish my algae would dissapear.

[tworoads]

you will knwo if they die because they always turn upside down

[plancton]

For real?, one is upside down and hasn't moved for days, I was wondering if it was dead.

What about the ones that don't move much and seem to sleep a lot, are they dying?

[tanker]

I have never had one die, but I have always bought the larger "hairy" ones. From my experience they will not eat nori--just algae. When the "job" is done I either trade back to LFS or with fellow hobbiest/reefer. I too have a few PH, but with sea hares in tank I always put a sponge filter on the intake. The seahare is not going to be in tank long (eats too much algae too fast) so spong filter will not be in tank long.
Also they are very sensitive to water chem changes so acclimate it like a shrimp.

[Captinshinyside]

I bought one the other day he is around 3 inches long. He seems to eat for 3 hours then nap for 3 hours seems to be an on going pattern. But my god does he ever eat some algae. I hope he will eat on the Nori I bought would be sad for him to die after he does his job.

Anyone have an thing else they will eat other then algae?

[plancton]

Oh I didn't know you had to acclimate them carefully as they told me they were hardy, so I just put the bag to float for 10 mins then set them free.

[tanker]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=13431612#post13431612 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by plancton
Oh I didn't know you had to acclimate them carefully as they told me they were hardy, so I just put the bag to float for 10 mins then set them free.

Hardy and acclimate are two different things.

Cleaner shrimp are hardy, but must be slowly acclimated too.