Sea Hare in aquarium - possible trauma

December 14, 2006
From: Jose Rodriguez

My son purchased a 3 inch long sea hare for my tank. We came home later to find that the sea hare had burrowed it head within the intake opening of the rio pump. I unplugged the electrical current and was not able to free or the sea hare did not free itself after a half hour. I freed the hare by disassembling the pump and cutting away the housing. The sea hare was returned to the tank and it crawled toward live rocks, where it stayed. Question is how hardy are they?

Jose Rodriguez
New York

aurang99@optonline.net

Rodriguez, J., 2006 (Dec 14) Sea Hare in aquarium - possible trauma. [Message in] Sea Slug Forum. Australian Museum, Sydney. Available from http://www.seaslugforum.net/find/18995

Dear Joe,
One problem with nudirbanchs in aquaria is that sometimes their curiosity is not in their best interests. Fortunately they can survive quite a bit of damage, and because they lack a skeleton, they are in many ways just a flexible sac. This means they can be quite amazingly distorted when sucked up a tube, but if they can be carefully removed- as you have done - there is often no permanent damage.

Concerning how hardy they are - it is a couple of days since you sent this message so if the sea hare is still alive I would say it has survived the episode. It would be good if you could isolate the intake though, as there is no guarantee the sea hare will have learnt the lesson.

Best wishes,
Bill Rudman

Rudman, W.B., 2006 (Dec 14). Comment on Sea Hare in aquarium - possible trauma by Jose Rodriguez. [Message in] Sea Slug Forum. Australian Museum, Sydney. Available from http://www.seaslugforum.net/find/18995

Factsheet

What are Sea Hares?

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