Cuke caught in powerhead........a data point.

[LouH]

I had a tigertail cucumber get injured in a powerhead last night and it dumped its guts. I just happened to walk into the room to find the cuke stuck to the wall of the tank and its entrials were hanging out of the bottom of it. Having read countless times how toxic cuke entrials are to fish, I quickly turned off all powerheads and extracted the cuke and its guts from the tank. After feeling confident that I had gotten most of it out of the tank, I turned everything back on.

When I woke up this morning the tank was still dark, so I went to work not knowing what damage the cuke may have done to my tank's inhabitants. When I came home from work today all was fine. No dead or ill looking fish, and all of the corals in the tank had nice polyp extension and color.

I know that there is a lot of information out there that says that cukes will nuke a tank if they eviscerate their entrials, but this is a case where it just didn't happen. The tigertails may be low in toxicity relative to other species so they may be "more safe" than others.

[seapug]

Also depends on the size of the cucumber in relation to the volume of the tank.

[LouH]

The cuke was about 6" long when scrnuched up and cinsiderably longer when stretching out from under a rock to scavage something off the sandbed. Thichness was somewehre betweed a penny and a nickel. The tank is 100 gallons nominal. I do run Ozone which goes throug 4 cups of GAC, I imagine some of the compounds were rendered harmless with thosde processes.

On a side note, I took the cuke, guts trailing, and threw it into my fishless soft coral tank. He behaved normally and crawled into the rocks, dragging guts behind. I think that he may actually survive. We'll see.

[aleonn]

Glad you caught this before major damage. Even better if he survives!

[LouH]

When I put it into the 30 gallon it was still moving its mouth parts and attached itself to the glass. I checked on it a half hour later and it was moving down the glass, guts still attached. When I got home from work last night I couldn't locate it in the rockwork and it wasn't on the sand, so I think that there is a very good chance that it survived.

[atreis]

That could also be the reason that your tank wasn't nuked - whatever portion is toxic might not have been lost to the water.

[bglegs]

That had happened to me also two times...once when out of town ...guard came off powerhead ..everything in tank was fine..cucumber died after several days...