molting question

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well tank has cleared up, i did the annoying task of removing all 110 pounds of rock, still no cucumber. however i did find that my black spine sea urchin is dead :( , im finding this sw tank to be stressful, lots of money, im trying to be patient and not dump everything in to it in one week. and now i officialy lost my first invert. any way that was just me venting. so still no cucumber, but i didnt check threw the sand im not sure if he would burrow.
 
Thats why I dont like dealing with inverts, period. I stick with tried and true, hardy inverts that have been kept for a long time.

Snails, peppermint shrimp, and hermit crabs (ugh). I have one skunk cleaner just for the ornamental value. I honestly think Corals (sans demanding sps) are more predictable and easier to keep then inverts.
 
Gprime;4611351; said:
It says 1 cap full for every 50 gallons i dose about 1/4th of that once a week.
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I took the dosing of my iodine down to about the same values, but I did it every other week. Molting seemed to stop. I am now DONE dosing iodine because I dont know exactly what it is, or isnt doing. I cant test for it, so I wont dose it. Simple as that.

The only thing I dose that I dont test for is Mg, and thats because I buy my Ca supplements in a 2 part mixture. (You need Mg to synthesize Ca)

expkeeper19;4614856; said:
well tank has cleared up, i did the annoying task of removing all 110 pounds of rock, still no cucumber. however i did find that my black spine sea urchin is dead :( , im finding this sw tank to be stressful, lots of money, im trying to be patient and not dump everything in to it in one week. and now i officialy lost my first invert. any way that was just me venting. so still no cucumber, but i didnt check threw the sand im not sure if he would burrow.
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Cucs are not recommended for beginners. We can hope that he is still in there somewhere, but chances are he is not, and was the root of the cloudy water, that most likely killed your urchin.

Cucs are very sensitive to water params, feeding, and harassment. They also can be affected by alleopathic competition if I am not mistaken.

Now that you have had lots of waste in your tank, I would let it do a good cycle, then get some bombroof (and most likely cheap) inverts to build up a solid cleaning crew. Once you have that, and a cycled tank, slowly start stocking hardy fish.
 
^^ Agreed

And like I said before, if you ever do a cucumber again, stay away from detritivors. They are typically the most toxic out of cucs, and the most likely to bury into a sand bed an die off.
 
Just thought I would throw my 2 cents in, there are a number of sand bed dwelling sea cucumbers so its entirely possible hes under the sand, but I wouldn't go searching for it, as you could kill it (Assuming its not dead). Assuming its a sand dweller the stuff in the water is just sand and gunk kicked up by the burrowing animal. Also I wouldn't recomend a cucumber period, unless you have a huge messy reef tank, as they destroy biofiltration in the sand bed (as they eat the bacteria and mircoinverts out of the sand) and they can get huge, like 3'+.

As for Iodine, never dose it, the required levels of iodine in a reeftank are so low that you cant measure them. The reason your inverts molt more when doseing Iodine is that Iodine is toxic and they are using their molting to remove Iodine from their bodies, this frequent molting is hard on inverts and shortens their lifespan. So in conclusion to that, Iodine that is needed in the tank is added by water changes and food that you put in the tank.
 
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