Urchin Parasites?

[fhazie]

I noticed the other day that there is something on my urchin. It is a purple spined urchin about the size of a golf ball. There looks to be five snail like creatures on it.

Does anyone know what these might be? Or if they are harmful to the urchin?

Anything will help. Thanks

 

[LeslieH]

Those probably are parasites. There are many molluscs that make their living parasitizing other critters particularly in the family Pyramidellidae. I would remove them.

 

[fhazie]

Thanks Leslie. Any special suggestions how?

Or will a pair of tweezers do just fine?

 

[fhazie]

So I tried picking them off with some tweezers. They just oozed really bad. I left three of them on just cause I couldn't get to them.

I'll update as soon as I see some signs somethings happening.

 

[pagojoe]

As Leslie says, they probably are parasites. If they aren't in the family Pyramidellidae, they are most likely eulimids. If they ARE eulimids, the shells will be so slippery that it may be hard to catch them with tweezers. Pyramidellids will have some sculpture on the shell, while the eulimids that are parasitic on urchins will normally have none, or only an advancing line of axial sculpture formed by the previous lip positions. You might try holding the urchin and just brushing or scraping them off.

Here's a link to Eddie Hardy's eulimid thumbnail page. Most of the ones shown are the large ones or aberrant ones. Many of the species not shown here are small, white or transparent, smooth, and very hard to separate.

http://www.gastropods.com/Taxon_pages/TN_Family_EULIMIDAE.html

Cheers,


Don

 

[fhazie]

The update on my urchin is all but one has been removed. The ones I pulled off turned red first then completely disappeared.

However, now most off the spines seem to be disappearing. They are only about half the length they used to be. Not really sure what is going on.

Will update later

Ryan