Sea Hare

[byee]

I picked up my second sea hare to help get rid of the hair algae in my tank over the weekend.

I've noticed both my cleaner shrimps are picking at the hole on the back of the sea hare. Is this common occurrence? My sea hare has released a reddish dye as a result of this.

Is this behaviour common? Does it affect the sea hare?

Whats everyone's experience who's had a sea hare in their tanks?

Thoughts?

[iamfrontosa]

I am not a big fan of sea hares. My cleaner shrimps also picked his ass. Other than that they are fine. Just ugly looking creatures.

[byee]

OK, the green sea hare (off-white coloured) died! RIP.

This is my second one from JL, only living for whole 3 days. Yup, 3 days!!! The first one lasted maybe a day or two more.

Unfortunately, neither one ate the hair algae in the tank. They both preferred to roam around on the glass sticking their snout above the water on the odd occasion.

They were both climatized with a slow drip over a 3 hour period.

At this point, I'm hesitant to buy another sea hare especially if they only live in my tank for 3-5 days.

I'm not sure if it's because I didn't climatized it properly. Parameters of the tank are normal and consistent based on previous test results.

At this point, I'm looking for alternatives to get rid of the hair algae. The hair algae is about 0.5cm long covering maybe 5% of my reef rock.

Any suggestions to rid my tank of hair algae? Snails? Replacing the reef rock?

Thoughts?

[maron6977]

Have you thought about an urchin ?

[SeaHorse_Fanatic]

Abalones are a more expensive and harder to find algae eater, but they also tend to be a bit more hardy. Sorry you've had such bad luck with sea hares.

[iamfrontosa]

Tangs..?

[byee]

Originally Posted by maron6977

Have you thought about an urchin ?

Is there a particular urchin which will eat the hair algae?

[maron6977]

I've always had good luck with pincushion urchin.