Sea Spiders are widespread in the ocean and on coral reefs yet we hardly, almost never, encounter them in our reef aquariums. We can think of just a couple of times seeing the lone sea spider walking along some fresh live rock and at least one case where an aquarist had an infestation of them which was doing some serious damage to his corals.
Unlike many coral parasites which are small, microscopic or cling tightly to our ornamental corals, sea spiders are larger, easy to see with the naked eye and very easy to physically remove. But just because some sea spiders get their food in the form of coral polyps doesn’t mean we can’t appreciate how interesting and beautiful some of these species are.
If sea spiders were offered alive for aquaria and we knew exactly what to feed them some species could ven make for colorful pets in small single-species aquaria like a little reef tarantula. Provided that aquarium care was well understood, would you keep a colorful sea spider in a dedicated nano display?
