black long spine urchin

[chad508]

i was woundering about the spines of a black urchin. should i remove the spines that break off in the tank, our will they dissolve away. im not woried about what they look like in the tank, but if they pollute the tank some how i would want to remove them. thanks alot

 

[horkn]

they dont pollute at all AFAIK


i had a longspine urchin a while back, and unfortunately, the acclimation didnt go as planned. It didnt live long. and the spines are still in the substrate.

is your urchin shedding spines? hopefully not many, because thats what happened to mine

 

[The steven liu]

Whenever the longspine urchin sheds excessively they are on their way out. I don't think the lost spines is a problem but they will not "dissolve" and probably will break off into little pieces the next time you syphon your sand. However becareful not to get yourself stabbed if you are to poke around with your bare hand in the sand I've learned the painful way.

 

[SouthFloridian]

I have a longspined urchin (named spike!)
I got him for my nano cube. He was very small then.
I am still pretty new at this. Anyway, he was doing pretty well, running around eating all my coralline algae. I raised the salt level apparently to fast, when He started shedding his spines everywhere. The same thing happened when I was trying to control my PH and alk. Well, apparently I raised it to much. He started shedding his spines again. I didn't realize how sensitive he was to those changes.

He survived though. He was nearly bald. I almost killed him twice.
He's now in my 110g tank (He's twice the size now).

I've thought about changing his name to "lucky", but the name is already taken by my coral banded shrimp that I had in my sump. When I came home from a trip, he was gone. I thought he had died (sucked up by the return pump). I discovered him a month later in the same chamber with the skimmer pump. I don't know how he survived or what he ate. But he "earned" that name.