Best Urchin

[VacavilleFC3S]

i have a rock burrowing urchin like J.Mongomery, he came as a hitchhiker with a couple yumas. in 2 months he hasn't left the hole he came in and it's very slowly getting deeper. i dig him he adds great variety to my aquarium.

 

[Guygettnby]

so your a biologist of what? i guess it really doesnt matter anyways though as i have seen urchins eat different corals and there have been others. there are also a few articals i have read that have said that some urchins will eat certain corals. i will do some searching and see if i can come up with them to show you.

i have also read that the long spine urchin did have some venom in it but it did not mention that its spines were poisoness. i will have to look into this myself to make sure. i have also been stuck by this urchin alot of different time with nothing more then a small dot were i was stuck. so if you have some info on this i would like to see it, IE website, documentation, books?

it is also very possible to keep these urcins long term as long as you have a big enough tank, i have known a few people who have had them for years and them to grow rather large.


so i guess this is one of those subjects were there are equal amounts of people on each side that will say they are reef safe or not and that they will eat corals or not. this has been something i have been saying for years and i dont think there will ever really be a true answer out there as everybody has different expierences with these creatures.

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=13647879#post13647879 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by Airwolf75
Good question, I suppose I need some credentials.

Well, I'm a biologist, and Sponsorship Secretary of the Las Vegas Valley Reefers club here in LV, reefkeeper & diver. I went diving on a remote fringing reef in Tobago north of Charlotteville, saw about est. 5000 of them living on the rocks of a small area around Elkhorn Coral, zooanthids, and brain corals. some of the rocks were covered with urchins completely. They had trimmed the hair algae on the rock right up to the edge of the corals. Leaving the corals unharmed. One has to wonder, with such extreme density, why an urchin would not even accidentally eat the coral.

I went home, bought 3 from Pacific East Aquaculture, and got a 4th one later from Atlantis, and they have been living in my 180 gallon reef for about 3 years now. They are still small, and they don't eat coral. There are also other people who say the same thing.

So now I recommend them to people, based on my experience over the past few years. Plus, I like to give an alternative to the long-spine diadema urchins, that grow to be the size of basketballs, have you actually seen how big these get? They're even venomous. Who exactly is keeping this urchin long term? If at all? it's even in books written by experts on the subject that they are great for algae control. A 3ft. diameter ball of posionous sharp spines for algae control, that doesn't sound all that great to me.