Cucumber trouble

Oredigger77

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I just got my latest order from @reefcleaners it included two strawberry conchs, a spider conch and a yellow cucumber. The snails looked great when they arrived and were peeking out if their shell but the cucumber did not. There were a bunch of solids floating in its bag and it looked in pretty bad shape. So after floating it for about 20 minutes I got it out and into my tank as quick as possible.

The snails have done great and are crawling all over the sandbed but the cucumber hasn't moved and still doesn't look any better than when I put it in the tank 5 hours ago.

20220329_155824.jpg


It hasn't moved at all either. I've heard of these things nuking tanks as they die so I'm tempted to pull it and flush it. But I wanted to check first and see if this is normal shipping stress or something that will be recoverable.
 
I'm pretty inexperienced, but that does not look good. From what I've read, the yellow cucumbers typically do not nuke tanks, but I'm not sure I'd take the risk, personally.

#reefsquad
 
I'm pretty inexperienced, but that does not look good. From what I've read, the yellow cucumbers typically do not nuke tanks, but I'm not sure I'd take the risk, personally.

#reefsquad
Ya, if it hasn't moved when I get back home I'll probably end up pulling it. I was excited to get one just to add some variety to my clean up crew but with it being so rough I don't want to risk it.

If any one has any idea in the next hour or so I'd love to hear them.
 
I'm inexperienced in this area as well, but I'd say that if you decide to leave it in for a time (I don't think I would), it would be wise to run carbon and have a large (or multiple large) water change(s) ready just in case.

Personally, based on how it looks in your photo, I'd move it to a quarantine tank (if you have one) as a precaution, because I have to agree that it doesn't look good and the fact that you haven't seen it move is not a great sign. That said, the yellow sea cucumber can recover from quite a bit of abuse, so it might come back from this if it isn't already dead - but I wouldn't count on it.

Just my two (admittedly inexperienced) cents.
 
I just flushed it. Right before lights out it started floating around the tank. If it can't even hold on I don't think there was much left for it to come back with.

No signs of anything else in the tank being unhappy so I think I missed any toxins.
 

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