Black long spine urchin oddity

[eyecancer]

I have had thise black long spine urchin for about three months now, I picked him out as he looked a little different than the rest at the lfs, he has subtle neon blue stripes in between his spines and instead of the regular red/orange anal coloring it's all black.

This past week I saw a single spine on my sand bed and I thought nothing of it as he/she/it was displaying his normal nocturnal habit of roaming the tank eating, as I saw poop being excreted. Yesterday though is my main concern, my roommate asked if his spines have gotten shorter, I looked and this appears to be the case. He is housed in a 55 with a 20 sump. Salinity 1.025, nitrate 0

Anyone have similiar cases or ideas as to what happened?

 

[SirToppemHat]

I would just keep an eye on him. If it's loosing a lot of spines it's a bad sign. Only loosing a couple is normal from roaming etc...

 

[eyecancer]

Thanks for the reply, I remember seeing an incredibly large black long spines death at the lfs in one of their display tanks, it was a complete mess, so nothing like that. So do you think he just lost a couple of his longer ones to give the appearance of being shorter? I also saw something neat he was sleeping in the corner (do they sleep?) and my fire shrimp was cleaning his spines. Made me smile.

 

[jhildebrand]

Losing multiple spines usually indicates major stress or disease. Otherwise a spine or two here and there are normally from trying to squeeze between rocks. These will get bigger than you'll like in a 50g. They can knock a lot over. The tips of the spines snap off easily, so it'll happen as it navigates the tank while grazing away. Cool as heck though unless they're constantly knocking over corals and rock.

 

[EleganceMan]

i have two huge long spines in my 210 reef and just this month i noticed that when i was slacking on feeding my tank, one of them started to eat my sps coral. These guys are so cool i would hate to have to get rid of them. I grew them from baseball size and now the big one is basketball sized.