Normal Sea Hare Behavior

PamBrent71

Non-member
We got a sea hare to battle algae with us (9 month old tank with 65g display, 15g sump). It has been in the tank for almost 48 hours and while it has slurped the glass and sampled the rocks, I am not seeing a lot of change in algae. Even where it was on the glass it leaves little clean marks that look like deer tracks in mud, not like a street sweeper.

I am a little concerned that it does not like the algae we have - which is sea lettuce and mostly GHA (I think it is GHA, it survived a batch of reef-flux a month ago so I don't think it is bryopsis). I understand they don't live long if they run out of food so I want to understand if they normally take time to get in the groove of mowing down their veggies, or if we have a potential problem on our hands. I don't want to kill the thing - it is an interesting creature - so that's why I am wondering how normal this behavior is (do I need to intervene).
 
Not sure why people look much beyond Mexican Turbos when algae is an issue. Other than knocking over a frag here or there and eating themselves out of a food supply I have never had any issues with them
 
I used a dolabella sea hare once and it did an amazing job. Only place it didn't go was really high flow spots. I can't remember how soon before I really noticed a change, but I remember it mostly resting during the day and really doing work at night. Just my experience. Id give it some more time. It might be eating, just not out front where you are looking.
 
Mine took a few weeks to start going after the hair algae. I was worried he didn't like but I guess he just liked the other stuff better and once that was gone her turned the HA and it was gone is about a week.
 
Good news, it is making the rounds and when it tears into the gha it really makes a meal of it. It also likes climbing the glass to slurp algae, and I think we are calling it Llama The Sea Hare for now because it looks more like a llama than a rabbit.

If nothing else, it spurred me to run all the water tests and be sure we are a-okay on that front. So that was reassuring (we get lazy and use the automated ORP, pH, Ca, Mg, Alk tests ... run phosphate sometimes, and Nitrate, Nitrite, and Ammonia too infrequently imo).
 
This thing is WEIRD looking. It basically develops some kind of elephantitis when it eats. Or edema. But I found this link and I think this is normal:

I can't say I have ever enjoyed a meal as much as this cutie. Just in case anyone else gets one of these and thinks, "wth is it doing?" check this out. It shows him approaching a meal and then what he looks like after chowing down a bit.
 

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