Tiger Tail Cucumber Venom

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Hey reefers, I have a question. I heard someone that tiger tail sea cucumbers are not venomous and won’t wipe out a tank if they die but then I heard that there is another species that is extremely toxic? I get mine from Australia because I am Australian so do we have the peaceful ones? Also what is the sea apples chance of nuking a tank? I saw two at my LFS and I was attracted to them. Thanks for the rwsponses

 

[Ron Reefman]

A) Cucumbers are NOT venomous! They may be toxic to a tank if they die, but that is TOTALLY different!

B) Sea Apples are toxic when they die and they can be quite difficult to keep. How toxic they are depends on how big the sea apple is and how big or small your tank is.

 

[Cell]

My impression is that a tiger tail's risk of nuking a tank on death is similar to an anemone's, but I'm not sure if that is the reality or not. I feel like the fear of nem's nuking tanks is a bit overblown. Yes it can happen, but its usually when a nem dies and things are left unchecked for a day or two, not just a few hours.

 

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Would Carbon help?

 

[Phycodurus]

to elaborate on ron reefman's answer a bit, sea cucumbers are poisonous (venom is injected ... think snake bites, bee stings, spider bites, etc.).

sea cucumbers can release a poison if they are harmed (i.e. sucked into a pump). they also have the ability to expel their organs which also can foul and poison the water. tank volume is not insurance: I had the misfortunate of losing some fish in a 180G set-up after a large ornamental Opheodesoma medusa worm [a type of sea cucumber] found its way into a filter and died (but some fish did survive). carbon definitely helps.

tiger tail sea cucumbers are Holothuria, and I'm not aware of any Holothuria not being potentially poisonous.

 

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I see. I have a sponge for my wavemaker (Vortech) and I will take my filter offline once I get my Hang on Refuguim, should I cover the pump it comes with? Also, If I have everything covered and peaceful fish (2 Ocellaris Clownfish, Coral Beauty, Blue Tang, and I will get soon a spotted and splendid mandarin dragaonet. If the risk is low, what is the chance of a sea apple realising toxins? I watched CoralFish12g's videos of inverts you shouldn't buy and so far I already have 2 sea stars and an BTA. He said that people get attracted to the beauty of it and I didn't really care but then when I saw it and my LFS (I need this). Would you recommend them?

 

[Phycodurus]

the sponge guard for the vortech wavemaker is good insurance, but stay on top of keeping it clean on the off-chance the debris it collects is an appetizing snack. you don’t want to encourage it to hang out near the vortech.

the pump for yr hang-on refugium doesn’t sound like it’s all that big, but you’ll want to play it safe. a sponge guard on it will serve as a prefilter and also provide additional surface area for beneficial bacteria to colonize.

i haven’t kept sea apples specifically so i can’t speak from experience on them (i only have Holothuria & Pentacta cukes). if you’ve made an effort to take precautions, i really think the risk is low.

aside from what CoralFish12g may state about them (respectfully), if you’re interested in sea apples, then go for it but with responsible intentions in mind: “yes, my tank is big enough” / “yes, i’m willing to feed it regularly the phytoplankton it needs to stay healthy” / “ yes, i have the experience to meet the advance care sea apples require”

 

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I will have coco worms and maxima clams so dosing marine snow and phyto will be fine!

 

[DSEKULA]

I had a pink cuke in my tank, have strainers over everything and sponge guards over. Had the cuke for about two years with out issues. One day I came home from work to a very cloudy tank with pink chunks coming out of my loop returns. Some how the cuke pushed past the sponges and pushed it self in through the strainers into the pump to get chopped up. This thing was a good 6" long and 1_1/2" thick... I had no clue this was possible. The system is 255gallons. I immediately shut down the pump, cleaned, added carbon, and did a 75% wc that day that min and another a couple hours later when I had more water changing 150% basically... I didn't loose anything and count myself lucky, but also have to note that while the cuke was sliced up all of its innards seemed to be intact and not in a state of decomposition. I can only assume this had happened right before I walked in and could have been much worse. I won't be getting another bc idk how I could possibly prevent this from happening again.

 

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Eek

 

[DSEKULA]

Eek

I felt so bad, I'd never add an animal to my tank thinking it could get brutally chopped up like that. I really liked my cuke it was a great sand sifter. btw that's what they do, eat your sand and poop it out clean in cool cuke poop swirls. Make sure you have nice fine sand if you get one or it's likey to starve you can tell it's eating by the trails of cuke poop all over the tank. If not they slowly start consuming themselves and get smaller until they die. I assume this is the risky part bc most people probably don't realize their dead at first as sometimes they just stay in the same spot for days anyway.
The sponge I had was the more coarse kind and my strainers have 1/8" slots. Idk how that happened but it did so I'm not risking it.

 

[DSEKULA]

I know pics worth a thousand words so here's a pic of it hiding with the gobies kind of wrapped under my carpet nem, this was not a small animal to fit in an 1/8" grid.

 

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Okay so, so I have oolite aaragonite sand and I have a 40 gallon. Does he eat pods by the way? He is just so cool but I do not want to just but my pets in a 100 percent death wait. If I feed him, keep water good and cover pumps, should I be fine? Also this is what sponge the vortech came with,

 

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That looks awesome!!

 

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I am sorry for your post though

 

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Also just getting a tiger tale cucumber isn’t bad either! I heard they also eat sand and poop clean sand but also aren’t they hardy?

 

[DSEKULA]

Pods specific idk, they eat whatever is alive in the sand, I'd assume this includes certain pods, detritus, and algae. One of them kept my 255gal system spotless. I had to add in the real light power type sand to get mine to start eating.. it didn't eat for the first few days untill I added the super soft powder to the mix. I'd think those would be fine to cover the phs but I thought my huge sheet of sponge 14"×8" covering everything and rubber banded in place was good to so my opinion isn't worth too much in this case lol.

 

[DSEKULA]

Also just getting a tiger tale cucumber isn’t bad either! I heard they also eat sand and poop clean sand but also aren’t they hardy?

If you can keep them fed their pretty hardy, my understanding is that they need to be acclimated really well at all stages or they just quit eating and don't make it. I'd look for one at the lfs that's already doing well and eating bc that would mean it made it to them in decent shape. It's hard to tell with this type animal the health otherwise. You certainly wouldn't know if it had started shrinking and eating itself if you hadn't seen it b4 that day and the shrinking dieing can take weeks to months. You want one that's actively munching sand if possible and you should definitely see sand pouring out the other end, that should be an almost continuous state for them even if you don't see eating there should be a stream of sand out it's other end.

 

[DSEKULA]

Obviously not my pic, but you want to see something like this when your buying one.

 

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Okay, so when you say all stages, do I take it out of the tank every week and acclimate it? Anyways, would a 40g system with just a nassarius snail in the sand bed be good? I saw one at my lfs and it was bright red, white spikes etc.