Urchins

[jcook54]

Why oh why do I like urchins so much?!?! I've got a pincushion urchin in both of my larger tanks and every morning I have to play a quick game of "Find the frag" because they will have knocked on off or picked one up to hang out with. If you're considering an urchin and have any frags, please know they will bulldoze through them and deposit them behind the one rock you can't se to grab it. At this point I let them carry around what they find as long as it's not an acro or something. My downstairs guy has been dragging around a piece of cabbage leather on a small rock for weeks.

 

[FutureInterest]

Aye I have a tuxedo and he's a riot. He's a walking colony of zoas. They're adorable.

 

[bhodges82]

I've found then to be useful if have hair algae or excessive coraline. I've got a long spine in my shop tank but don't have fangs there.

Sent from my SM-G975U using Tapatalk

 

[ichthyoid]

The long spine (aka- diadema) urchin has been under the gun since the 80's.
I first witnessed it's decline in Barbados during the summer of 1984.
Martin Moe called these urchins the gardeners of the reef.

https://www.flaquarium.org/blog/posts/high-stakes-to-saving-a-spiney-

 

[Mom2Many]

I will never run a tank without a pincussion. They are worth their weight in gold to keep the tank really clean of any pest algea except for bubble algea. I even had one eat wire algea off a frag that came in that I didnt catch before it started to spread. Mowed it right down... Love those little guys...