SPS care for advanced aquarists

[Atomikk]

Your question urges me to work out the details for the 3. point "œhow sea urchins can replace siporax".

So yes, the answer for your question is that I have sea urchins!

HOW SEA URCHINS CAN REPLACE SIPORAX

As far as I see now, urchins might be a key to a well performing reef tank due to 2 reasons:

1. One of the challenges with SPS corals is that if you want to build a natural environment for them (so not anything twisted like Zeovit) you need to promote the performance of zooxanthellae (not their density, but their ability to produce sugars). Zooxanthellae has very similar preferences to other algae so the closer you go to NSW level trace elements like e.g manganese the more algae growth you will notice on live rock. This is where sea urchins (especially short spined species like Tuxedo) will help you a lot.
2. The other very frequent problem is that with time - even in ULNS environment - the surface of the live rock gets "œdirty". We all know that live rock is supposed to be the main place for bacterial activity including nitrification. But we tend to forget that what makes the live rock or even the reef ceramic to be a good place for bacteria is their porosity. Unfortunately in a mature aquarium detritus, coralline algae, and other "web like" algae can close the little pores on the surface of the live rock so that it becomes less and less efficient. This is again a good job for sea urchins. As they are chewing our rocks for algae they unintentionally reopen the pores and create fresh space for bacteria.

I see people buying cheap siporax from e-bay. I have no clue whether the original or their copycats are leaching any nasty stuff into the water but if the goal is to maintain strong bacterial population it may be worth to test 1 sea urchin per 25G (100L) before any investments into a new filtration method.

I have like +15 years of experience related of reefkeeping and I have just discovered sea urchins recently. I always considered them as something completely useless as long as I do not have algae problems, but now I see a new potential in their natural behavior.

Not sure if later posts covered this, as I have not read them yet, but I would be cautious with urchins in an closed environment such as our reef tanks. In my experiences with them (tuxedo or long spine) without a consistent source of algal growth, they will eat your hard corals.

It starts with eating your corraline algae, and then your montiporas, and eventually your acroporas. I had long spines take out all the tips of clustering acroporas. Tuxedos will eat montiporas if given a chance.