free to good home
- Thread starter prickles
- Start date
Tangman1218
In Memoriam
Prickles, try Phoenix FRAG forum. They have more people with FO systems that the Urchin would do better in. If you cant find a home, PM me. I know people in town that dont peruse reef boards that have FO systems that may take him, but I have to get a few more specifics from you.
Tang
Tang
ELCHUPACABRA
New member
i have quite a few urchins in my reef tank with no ill effects. excellent cleaners.
Tangman1218
In Memoriam
I suggested a FO system because corals usually dont far well with Black spine urchins. If you personally have Long Spine Black Urchins in a reef tank, thats great. Just goes to show that sometimes people can have tanks out of the norm.
Tang
Tang
ELCHUPACABRA
New member
THe Urchin is probably your best cleaner, I know mine is.
Jess, my tanks are defiantly out of the norm. I find the norm limiting and do what I want; it took a while and a lot of learning but I now have a very efficient system setups that require very minimal maintenance by design, and my urchin is an integral part of this system. I do not feed my tank as it is self sufficient and provides it own food. I rarely do water changes, maybe monthly at best and just for fun. I am not running a skimmer either. I simply have a very small bio-load, two black f. percs. Once a week sometimes twice a week I siphon all the accumulated waste at the bottom of the tank (bare-bottom) and sump into a 1 gallon pitcher, I let that sit for an hour so the waste settles to the bottom, and decant all but the last waste filled inch back into the tank. That is my maintenance regimen. Oh yeah, and I top off RO when the sump is so low that it starts sucking in air and producing millions of micro bubbles in the display, that or I wait even longer and the sump pump can't overcompensate the head pressure and just circulates water in the sump and the display runs autonomously by design. Sometimes in my frag surge tub, which has a varying water level depending on the state of the 5 gallon surge, I wait so long to top off that corals are exposed to the air, completely out of the water just before a wave comes crashing in. A true tide pool. I had a few zoo colonies spend half their time submerged and half their time exposed out of water for over a month to see what would happen. And the answer, nothing. They are fine, with no noticed increases or decreases in growth. They would even stay open after some adjustment when sticking out of the water.
So hopefully these examples demonstrate that I think out side the box, and through thousands of hours of experience, I have discarded the conventional reefers mentality to make way for a easier, self sufficient system that works for me. I highly recommend Urchins as the single best algae controller I have ever come across in the reef aquaria. You can always trim down their longer spines as they increase in mass, just leave the venomous inner spines alone. They rarely knock corals over, but so do I, so who am I to judge. Hope you find a home for your urchin, I might take it for my frag tub, if you really want to get rid of it.
Jess, my tanks are defiantly out of the norm. I find the norm limiting and do what I want; it took a while and a lot of learning but I now have a very efficient system setups that require very minimal maintenance by design, and my urchin is an integral part of this system. I do not feed my tank as it is self sufficient and provides it own food. I rarely do water changes, maybe monthly at best and just for fun. I am not running a skimmer either. I simply have a very small bio-load, two black f. percs. Once a week sometimes twice a week I siphon all the accumulated waste at the bottom of the tank (bare-bottom) and sump into a 1 gallon pitcher, I let that sit for an hour so the waste settles to the bottom, and decant all but the last waste filled inch back into the tank. That is my maintenance regimen. Oh yeah, and I top off RO when the sump is so low that it starts sucking in air and producing millions of micro bubbles in the display, that or I wait even longer and the sump pump can't overcompensate the head pressure and just circulates water in the sump and the display runs autonomously by design. Sometimes in my frag surge tub, which has a varying water level depending on the state of the 5 gallon surge, I wait so long to top off that corals are exposed to the air, completely out of the water just before a wave comes crashing in. A true tide pool. I had a few zoo colonies spend half their time submerged and half their time exposed out of water for over a month to see what would happen. And the answer, nothing. They are fine, with no noticed increases or decreases in growth. They would even stay open after some adjustment when sticking out of the water.
So hopefully these examples demonstrate that I think out side the box, and through thousands of hours of experience, I have discarded the conventional reefers mentality to make way for a easier, self sufficient system that works for me. I highly recommend Urchins as the single best algae controller I have ever come across in the reef aquaria. You can always trim down their longer spines as they increase in mass, just leave the venomous inner spines alone. They rarely knock corals over, but so do I, so who am I to judge. Hope you find a home for your urchin, I might take it for my frag tub, if you really want to get rid of it.
ELCHUPACABRA
New member
Me: 20g Long.
prickles:?
prickles:?
ELCHUPACABRA
New member
Glad to see he found a home. Mine just walks around eating algae, and spittin out little balls every once and a while. He cleans cleans cleans. I guess he acts like a house cleaner on speed. Never stops cleaning.
