Got some new buddies coming.....

[gatorracer]

So i tore down the tank this last weekend and did some PIA maintanence. I noticed I was starting to get a good amount of turf algae in the low flow areas in between rocks and in crevaces. It didn't bother me at first but then I realized that if I didn't take some action in a couple of months it might have spread like wild fire. So I did a 60 gallon water change and removed every piece of rock one by one into a rubber maid full of new saltwater and scrubed them with a tooth brush. Needless to say I had a lot more turf algae than I could notice when it was in the tank. Every rock had a spot somewhere or another and the spots I could see that looked short in the tank was long enough in some spots for me to pull it out like grass. :? When I got done the tank looked new again so it was worth the work.

Ok so after that here is my question. I pulled some old posts up looking for some info on riding turf algae. I also did some google searchs and I came to one conclusion. Sea hare's must mow down algae. I wish I would have saved the link but on like the 5 page on google there was a guy who did a 2 week before and after shot of his 75 gallon. Long hair algae everywhere before and two weeks later you could see beatiful rocks and only a couple spots the sea hare had not hit yet. So of course I order one from liveaquaria.com

Any one here ever had one or still have one? Any recomendations on acclimation or tips for keeping it alive for as long as possibe. Has anyone had experience with them inking the tank like they say they do as a defense mechanism? They should be here tommorow and I don't have to many worries but I have found the more help the better. So give me some advice please so I don't do something stupid :wink:

Thanks in advance.

 

[Anonymous]

Hey gator,
I had one, died because of something really stupid on my part. I was trying to set up an auto top off, and screwed up and ended up syphoning about 10g of fresh water into the sump. Droping the salinity extremely fast, which I then hurriedly tried to bring back up. He last 2 weeks after that and then just disappeared.

But, before that, my little guy did fast work of some short red hair algea and also dinos that were in my 29. I never found an alternate food source for my little guy, but others say (and I've seen some at an lfs) eat nori. I acclamated him very slowly and had no problems with anything bothering it. Only once did my engineer goby try to take a bite, but he does that with everything new in the tank. Make sure you cover intakes to ph's so that in the event of a freak accident, it doesn't get sucked in. Other than that, be prepared to do alot more tank gazing!

 

[gatorracer]

knowse...

I still can't picture what these things actually look like can you explain a bit? Is it just a slug? Do they move very fast? Do they go on the glass too or just the rocks and sand? And have you ever seen one ink?

 

[Anonymous]

Ok, just so you know...there are a LOT of different speices of "hares". Go to http://www.seaslugforum.net/factsheet.cfm?base=doladola
that's a link to the one I had (I think) you can do a picture id on most of the seahares.

Mine never inked, and yes it goes pretty much anywhere in the tank. They have a very large foot print so aren't sucked into powerheads or overflows that easily, but it can/could happen. Think of them as a cuter version of a slug, they just seem to have a bunny face. Somewhere I read that they're nocturnal, but mine was out at all times of the day. Actually, I think mine looked more like a schnauzer but that's just me.

Here's a pic.