Word Of Warning - Please Read

drksniper

Member
yes i account for them every day. my rock work is very open and my tanks are in walls with utility rooms behind them so i can look at every part of my tanks easily and quickly.
sorry i got your post confused with another post where the guy lost most of his seahorses to a cuke. thats my fault.
ill dig through my magazines tonight to see if i can find the article talking about cukes if i have time.
well tomato tomatoe i suppose. you call it luck i call it good husbandry. i do agree the sea apple is a big risk but hes also made it through a crash and a fast cycle and 4 different acclimations when i transferred stuff around so hes more than hardy enough but often enough people throw them in unseasoned tanks and disasters result. he along with some of the colorful ones are in the 225 which has a very large skimmer, carbon and a fuge on it as well as other filters so if anything does by chance happen the tank will be able to take it.
 

ophiura

Active Member
FWIW I have had two cukes die in my tank with no issues.
I tend to concur with the idea that we can cause unecessary and unwarranted fear of animals in this way. Personally, I would never recommend keeping one with those particular fish, but that is me, and what is done is done. Specifically I would avoid them with the tusk, shark and ray...as they will wander around the bottom and may disturb it. But obviously any tank with powerheads, overflows, etc can result in huge problems :(
There is no doubt whatsoever that this is a group of animals that does pose SOME amount of risk (some much moreso than others). That is clear. The toxin is a fish specific toxin and in some cases is astonishingly lethal, as shown here, and VERY RAPID. Not something you can necessarily have time to react to...this is a defensive toxin so must act rapidly in order to work.
But I would also say that people can give animals an unwarranted bad rap, or overlook another cause altogether in favor of one explanation. It is important that we don't do that either yet it is quite common in this hobby.
There is no doubt that the number of tank "nukes" from cukes is rare compared to the crashes from other causes. So while we must be aware, we must not ignore other issues..and, IMO, should keep things in perspective.
It is critical to put these animals in an appropriate tank, with appropriate tank mates. It is important to avoid them in some situations. But as with just keeping a basic tank, things can go very wrong very fast. It is the nature of the hobby, especially when we keep lots of things in a glass box that may not be compatible yet all the while desiring what passes for an "ecosystem."
This was an example of normal, natural behavior...and how normal, natural behavior often does not jive with our goals, even when we think it is to establish something like a natural system.
I'm sorry to hear this happened.
 

robn

Member
Sorry Justin, but for you to say that you account for them every day is an impossibility. I have no doubt that you practice due diligence by observing your tank with a watchful eye (as do I and probably most of us here). But for you to say with certainty that you can guarantee that any one of your numerous cukes could not climb the wall of your tank in the 10-12 hours that you are asleep is, well, simply ludicrous. If you take a step back from this and view your statement more rationally, surely you will see that you can't make this guarantee, nor could I, nor could anyone else. A cuke could easily make it from sand to overflow in less than an hour. You know better than that.
Here is some reading for you:
Cukes Warning 1
Cukes Warning 2
About 2/3's of the way down is an interesting line for you Justin "As for being poisonous, I would have to say that there is really no such thing as a completely non-toxic sea cucumber"
Cukes Warning 3 Another one for you Justin "According to Nigrelli and Jakowska (1960), at least 60 species of sea cucumber are toxic."
Cukes Warning 4
Cukes Warning 5
Cukes Warning 6
Another good quote for you: "This compound is present in all of the sea cucumbers of the genus Holothuria, which unfortunately make up most of the species commonly kept in aquaria"
Cukes Warning 7
Cukes Warning 8
Cukes Warning 9
Cukes Warning 10
Cukes Vendor Warning
Cukes Vendor Warning
This is just the tip of the iceberg......if you need more then I will happily provide them to you.
It's obvious that you have made up your mind about them, so there's not much I can say otherwise. You go ahead and chalk it up to "good husbandry", I'll chalk it up to "luck", and good fortune to you.
 

robn

Member
No, they seem to be doing great.....actually they looked fine throughout this whole thing, even while all the other fish were dying around them. I fed them Tuesday night and again last night....they ate greedily and are swimming around just fine......
Hopefully I'm out of the woods now.....I have a 42" dual Beckett skimmer that went crazy for about 5 hours after all this happened, so maybe it skimmed alot of the toxin out.....I'm also running 3 trays of new carbon in a cannister filter, plus I did a 100 gallon water change yesterday. The bad thing was I couldn't really do a large water change Tuesday because I didn't have any salt, and since it was Christmas, all the stores were closed.....lesson learned: always keep a supply of salt on hand.....
You can actually view them live on my webcams.....I have one at each end of the tank....it's best viewed with Internet Explorer (and it may have to do a small install for the ActiveX component)....here is the website:
My HomePage
Of course, there's not much to see anymore since most all my fish are now dead
 
something similer happened to me about 5 months ago. I had a cow fish die in my QT and it killed the other cow I was quarined with it.
 

robn

Member
T316,
I think so.....as I said earlier, my shark/eels/ray didn't act like they were affected at all....there's been no change in their behavior and they are all swimming and eating well.....thanks for asking.
I am running 3 trays of carbon, did a 100gal WC, and I'm skimming the heck out of it....there's no bad smell anymore and no oily surface.
I have no idea why the shark/eels/ray haven't been more affected by it.....still worried about them but feeling better. Is there any scientific reason why they are doing as well as they are, anybody? I know that the osmotic makeup of sharks and rays differ from bony fish, but it seems like the eels at least would have been killed also.... but hey, I'm not complaining !!!
 

drksniper

Member
eels tend to be pretty hardy once established. the shark and ray though i am curious about my self cause all the reading i have done on them has shown them to be pretty sensitive to changes. my only guess is perhaps they eat something similar to the cuke in the wild so they may naturally be able to counter act the poison.
 

robn

Member
drksniper,
The horn shark eats urchins and also anemones in the wild (along with crustaceans, worms, and small fish). Anemones can release poisons but I think it's of a different variety than cukes.......it IS strange though why they survived.
 

robn

Member
I thought some more about this whole situation, what lived/what died, etc. I have a theory about it....DISCLAIMER: this is just a theory.
I first noticed this because my very healthy Vlamingi tang was at the front on the tank on its side, dying.....on further inspection of the sump I noticed the dead cucumber on the bottom and just outside the bulkhead that goes to my pump that powers my Beckett (the pump is a PanWorld 200PS). When I got the cuke out I noticed that the end of it was cut off.....also my skimmer was empty. I realized my PanWorld was not pumping though it was still plugged in.
Here's what may have happened.....the cuke was sucked into the bulkhead and got chopped by the impeller of the PanWorld which shut it off, thus emptying the skimmer. The largest part of the cuke was flushed back out the pipe and bulkhead from the backwash of the skimmer. The remaining pieces of cuke would have gone into the skimmer chamber itself and would have flowed out the output PVC, back into the sump, and then returned to the display by the return pump.
I think maybe my bony fish ate some of the pieces of the cuke when they came back into the display.....the first fish to die was my Vlamingi which was the most eager feeder of the bunch....just a week or so ago I added the Snapper, Blue tang, and Sweetlips.....the snapper had started eating but still fairly lightly, the blue tang had barely started eating, and the sweetlips has not eaten anything since going in (and unfortunately will probably starve).....the sweetlips is still alive. The blue tang was the last fish to die, the snapper died right before the blue tang. The rest died much sooner. The eels stay in their hiding holes alot and have bad vision anyway, so it's unlikely that they would have seen cuke pieces anyway. The ray and shark are both trained to eat off of a feeding stick and the shark is a picky eater anyway. This whole scenario jives exactly with what happened and the order of events.
Now, there was an oily film on the water surface and a bad smell, so I know the water was fouled....but the "eating cuke pieces" scenario makes sense to me.
Sound reasonable?
 

drksniper

Member
as far as i know the actual body of the cuke isnt poisionous(its eaten in some parts of the world mostly eastern asia i think is what i read). the gland that excretes the sticky white stuff is actually a bigger part of the body(most of the body infact because its focus is to escape and survive not commit suicide at the first sign of danger and the white secretition is actually used for medical purposes and is further being researched for its beneficial properties) then the poison making center so i would say the fact the skimmer wasnt skimming is the final piece to this puzzel. next to stagnant water with no significant source pulling out the toxins, it was your end all.
it makes since about the horn shark. most animals that have adaptations to posions in some manner usually can adapt to others fairly quickly, evolution within the animal kingdom to stay on top.
 

ophiura

Active Member
The body of cucumbers is quite often toxic.
For scientific reference:
Journal of Food Science
Volume 54 Issue 3 Page 567-568, May 1989
To cite this article: MARIA V. CHANG-LEE, ROBERT J. PRICE, LUCINA E. LAMPILA (1989)
Effect of Processing on Proximate Composition and Mineral Content of Sea Cucumbers (Parastichopus spp.)
Journal of Food Science 54 (3), 567–568.
doi:10.1111/j.1365-2621.1989.tb04653.x
The nutrient content, texture and holothurin content of two sea cucumber species were determined for fresh, dried and canned products. Fresh sea cucumber contained 89–91% moisture, 5–6% protein, 0.3% fat, 3% ash and 0.3% carbohydrate; dried sea cucumber contained 2–6% moisture, 61–70% protein, 2–3% fat, 16–24% ash, and 2–3% carbohydrate. Fresh sea cucumber contained 90 mg of holothurin per 100g of tissue. Canned sea cucumber contained moisture and protein levels similar to those generally found in marine finfish. Processing methods for canned sea cucumber resulted in a significant (P<0.01) decrease in potassium and increase in sodium. No significant differences (P<0.01) were found in the texture of canned products made from fresh-cooked, salted-cooked and cooked-dried raw material.
In case you wanted to eat one yourself....
Holothurin is under research for various pharmacological impacts, in particular in anti-tumor research.
The toxin can be found in the body wall, organs and particularly in the Cuverian tubules which are often expelled at predators.
I would agree that the skimmer going down had an impact, but the reality is this is a fast acting toxin, and any "threat" to the animal - real or perceived - could result in rapid poisoning.
 

t316

Active Member
What's tonight's update robn? All remaining survivors okay? Tank stabilized out and ready to start back over?
 

robn

Member
Everything looks great, fed eels/shark/ray about an hour ago, all ate ALOT, shark ate a lot of squid, eels ate about 7-8 whole large shrimps apiece, ray ate 5 shrimps and several pieces of squid.
Looking good
 

ophiura

Active Member
It is entirely possible they have a different reaction to it - after all, you also should not use standard copper treatment on eels and elasmobranchs when for the most part it is a very common treatment for bony fish. Your logic above may be valid but I can also imagine that they have a different susceptibility to it. Would be an interesting study but so far I haven't found references to it.
 
Thanks so much for warning me I was just going to pick one up at the LFS when I read this artical. I'm not getting one now. I'm really sorry about your fish and christmas. How did the rest of the fish do? Did any of the eels,sharks, or mantas pull through. I hope for your sake they did. Those guys are expencive.
Sorry
 
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