I added a small urchin to my cleanup crew and it has been all over my Zoas. Doesn’t seem to be damaging them but I’m just wondering if any problems might result from it. The spines don’t seem to be pricking them but it’s hard to see what’s happening at that scale. So far it’s not picking up my frags. Has anyone had an urchin? Again, this is a small round white or pink one.
Urchin?
- Thread starter Gdel
- Start date
I've always kept them and they've never been an issue. I'm sure it's irritating the zoas but it'll move on. I really like keeping them in spite of them being a real pain sometimes. They will pick stuff up, knock stuff over and leave little white sand "poop" all over the place. But I still love the little buggers and yours seems to be doing just fine. Probably found some algae between the zoas or something like that.
We've had both a tuxedo and a long spiny urchin. The long spiny one got huge and was good for cleaning film algae on the glass but eventually started chewing on coral so had to be rehomed. Same for the tuxedo urchin which would catch clove polyps on itself as it walked around and would end up ripping them out of the rockwork as they stuck to its back.
Ya @bg2311 , that sounds about right. I even had one in my frag tank when I started it up. (I've never been the brightest) However, they are a lot of fun to watch, are super unusual sometimes get so happy that they spawn. This pic doesn't have a ton of details but it was taken about a year ago when one of mine spawned. It really looked like it was smoking; gametes were just rolling off the darn thing.
I had a pencil urchin in my reef until it started eating anything it rolled over. He was moved to my FOWLR and I’m much happier. I had a long spine in a previous tank and he never seemed to bother anything.
Very cool to watch. Despite powerhead covers the long spiny urchins will also break spines when they walk on/near the power heads because their spines find their way into the props through the mesh or plastic cover.
Here's an old photo from back when we had ours. Looks like something out of Johnny Quest.
