Keeping A Tiger Cowrie Fed

[Rip Van Winkle]

Hey all,

Anyone on here have an adult tiger cowrie? I've just been "gifted" with a very large (baseball sized or just a little larger) adult and a small one that is about the size of a quail egg.

Both seem to be in really good health. The smaller one I put in my refugium where there is plenty of different varieties of macro algae. I'm not really worried about that one.

The larger one, I'm not sure how to feed. I don't really have any soft coral I can give it. (I'd pretty much never do that anyway) Are there alternatives? I've tried small pieces of shrimp, which it seems to have taken. What can it eat besides what I can find online that mentions anemones and soft coral?

 

[Reefing Madness]

 

[Greybeard]

Had one that ate a large, purple sponge. I 'gifted' him to a local shop, just after that

No more cowries for me!

 

[Rip Van Winkle]

Yeah unfortunately, they also eat sponges. Sponges are somethings that aren't usually easy to get to grow and AFAIK only grow in mature/established systems. One of my personal favorite organisms. So I can totally hear what you mean.
If I can't find a good place for these guys, I'll just take them and put them in the ocean. They're native here so no damage done but I was hoping to find a place for them. Pretty cool animals.

 

[keddre]

Following along. I was eyeing one at my lfs

 

[Rip Van Winkle]

My advice on this is "leave it in the Sea" . For people who know me, I rarely say that.
Maybe for a FOWLR but really, what would you feed it? Soft corals? When they're small Cowrie's eat macro algae and GHA, which is fine but as they get larger they take anemones and corals, etc,.... Things that we're trying to grow in our systems, so it doesn't match.
I was at the part of the beach yesterday where things float in to shore and I found a large styrofoam container that looks like it probably had been at sea for a while. It had a huge sponge growing on the inside of it (along with lots of other things). Anyways I broke parts of it off and brought it back for the cowrie, so it could it. (Which it is doing)

The only reason I have these is because I was at an event where we had put on a display tank and when it came time to take everything down, I ended up taking the two cowries and the sea cucumber because they probably would have ended up being left aside and neglected. No one wanted them. Definitely not something I'd go out and purchase.