cuc, could he be starving?

[reefNewbie]

My yellow cuke has lately been staying pretty much in one spot. Im wondering if he is either injured or starving. Like i said the other day, i thought he was molting because he had a big flap of what looked like skin on him. Hes still his usual bright yellow color, and is still alive. I had to get rid of 2 of my peppermint shrimps because they kept grabing him and trying to draghim into the rocks so they could eat him, bastards. So there is the possibility that he is injured, but from what i can see, i dont see any huge gaping wounds. any suggestions?

hes the yellow type from reeftopia.com

 

[Anonymous]

I have that same cuc and yes they do tend to stay in one spot for several days. Sometimes I go over a month before I see mine again. As long as there is food on the sand they will continue to mop it up in the same place.

Of course he could just be chillin out recovering from the shrimp atacks.

Do you ever see his feeder tentacles out mopping up sand? Does he look nice and plump? Or deflated?

He should have plenty of food to eat in your tanks, I have seen your other posts with pictures of the sand bed, I wouldn't think he was starving. Usually they starve because people keep them on crushed coral that they can't move through their bodies, or in pristine tanks the sand will be too clean and they starve.

 

[reefsnreptiles1]

Is it a Colochirus robustus?

http://www.liveaquaria.com/product/prod ... pCatId=715

If so, we have one as well and they should be spot fed phytoplankton. We feed ours DT's from a dropper.

Hope that helps!

Brian

 

[reefsnreptiles1]

By the way, the reason this kind needs to be fed is that they are filter feeders and not sand sifters. I tried looking on reeftopia but they don't show a pic so I don't know if this is the kind you have.

Here is a bad pic of ours:

 

[Anonymous]

Oh, I guess we need to find out exactly what he has, I have a yellow cuc and it is a sand mopper. Looks alot like your pic but without the filtering tentacles.

 

[CatinHat]

A friend of mine has one of these and it split. He gave me the split and it seems to be doing ok. It moves alittle once in a while. But my question is even after a month it seems as though it still hasn't developed it's filter feeding "arms". Does this take awhile or is something wrong?

 

[Will C1]

my pink and green cuke has not moved in over 2 years but my orange and black will move slightly say with in a 3" radius. they do fine i guess they found a home they liked.

 

[reefsnreptiles1]

Ours recently split and it seems that they take awhile to develop the filter tentacles. Once they have them though they should be out most of the time. If not, then they are most likely not happy with placement or water params. They seem to stay in one place most of the time and they remain fairly small.

Hope that helps!

Brian

 

[Anonymous]

No, I think Laura was correct. The one from Reeftopia is the atlantic sand cuke, and yes it feeds on detritus. If they are not getting enough to eat they will shrink, although it might not be noticable.

 

[Will C1]

my pink and green shrunk before i realized i needed to feed it. it was almost 4" in length and now it is 2" it got down to 1" before i figured out the problem. it has taken almost a year for it to grow back 1" and only 8mo to lose 3". im just glad he made it. i feed DT's live phytoplankton every 2 days.

 

[reefNewbie]

mine is exactly as mulberry described. thanks guys!