be warned! some short spined urchins are coral killers!

[bobamike]

Hey everyone,
I just want to warn everyone that short spine sea urchins will eat your corals .
I recently lost a torch coral that was doing well for the longest time then all of a sudden it's flesh started receding and then the brown jellyset in and finished it off.i was clueless to why it died.
Well the other day I noticed my open brain coral started showing signs of receding flesh on one side, I also noticed the nice white rock it was attached to, the urchin mowed the rock and the white line went right up to the coral where the flesh started receding, well now the coral is half covered with brown jelly and will be dead by tomorrow.and the urchin was on my frag rack when I got home today and has completely eaten the zoas of the frag he was sitting on when I got home.at this point I am thinking what happened is when the urchin crawls near any fleshy lps,its sharpe spines will simply puncture the tissue of the lps coral and that is what starts the lps down the road to death.but the zoas on the other hand,he simply mowed them down.
He is now in my qt until I decide what to do with him.


you can see where the urchin cleaned the rock here.


the second plug from the top had several zoas that I caught him eating.

 

[Calappidae]

Do you mean rock boring urchin or pincushion urchin?

Are you feeding him nori?


Pincushion, halloween, and tuxedo all carry around corals but eating them I can't see.

Pencil I wouldn't trust.. with coraline atleast.

The others are pretty reef safe.


Are your sure the urchin isn't suffocating them?

 

[bobamike]

the short spined black rock boring urchins,no Im not feeding them nori,I have plenty of algae on everything for them to eat.
take it for what its worth,I know what he did,and now I dont trust any of them.so to each thier own,if you want to take chances with your corals its on you,I just want to let everyone know my experience with them,

 

[Calappidae]

?

If anything these are harmless to corals. I'm very shocked about your experience with them. I know there has to be a string attached for this peticular species to cause damage as mine never did. Mine always goes around the coral fearing a nasty sting.