pencil urchin

[ugination87]

hey everyone,
im planning on getting a pencil urchin for my coraline encrusted 10 gal aga tank,, why do people say dont get it? will it eat my other corals? also, is it compatible with my 2 sexy shrimp, cleaner shrimp, and 2 fish?

 

[iCam]

I don't have personal experience with them, but many urchins will end up knocking a lot of things over.

 

[mejiggery]

I have a pencil urchin thats banished to the sump. they eat everything in their way yes including corals.
As said urchins will knock over small frags so you need to make sure everything is secure in the tank if getting an urchin. I have a black long spine urchin that is great for eating all types of algae in my tank without bothering anything else, but the do grow quick and big, the spines on my urchin are now about 1ft. Your best option may be something like a tuxedo urchin

 

[RicksReefs]

yup, pencils are known coral predators.

 

[aquawolf]

I also have a black long spine that doesn't bother anything at all.

I have a tuxedo urchin as well, and his name is velcro for obvious reasons. Even though he is small, every once in a while I have to rescue a hitchhiking snail or hermit crab that gets caught on his bristles. I leave the little pices of live rock rubble alone and let him carry those around so he gets a workout. ;-)

Neither of these has caused me any problems.

I did have an urchin that was brown and white and named destructo because he would carry frags around the tank and knock the rocks down no matter how tightly fitted together I thought they were. Trust me, it is not cool to have an urchin carrying frogspawn around the tank letting it "visit" everything else.

He went back to the LFS for free!

 

[ek9vboi]

i like urchins but damn they ate all the alge off my rocks... even my nice purple ones! mine got sick and was dying for some odd reason.

 

[Timfish]

Based on my own experiences with multiple systems over the last 3 decades I don't think small tanks, <30 gallons are adequate to provide enough algae for urchins long term and they likely will starve ro death after they get algae under control. What I would advise is getting a small captive bred tuxedo urchin and plan on rehoming it in a year or so aftrr it's grown some and got algae under control.

 

[Sk8r]

Tuxedo urchins are about the most manageable. I wouldn't use one with corals, because they can exert amazing force at dislodging things. But they're compact, rather small, and generally they're well-behaved. Everybody ought to try one once, just for the experience, and rehome it when it gets too crazy.