Urchin questions

[toddmau5]

First off, can anyone ID these urchins? http://www.flickr.com/photos/titanphotog/10464355286/sizes/l/in/photostream/
we have about 13 of them. They were cute when they were little but they have just gotten out of control. Some are just pure black, and some have a purplish color to them (under white lights) I was starting to wonder if they were beginning to snack on my zoas since the population seems to be dwindling a little bit, and every now and then in the morning i'll catch one parked on top of the colony.

 

[Calappidae]

IMO they look like rock boring urchins.

 

[toddmau5]

Looked them up, they so look very similar, then the search lead me to reef urchin and I'm starting to lean that way

 

[Calappidae]

Where did you get them from? See if you can find out their name through the supplier.

 

[toddmau5]

Hitchhiked on the rock from tbsaltwater. Its only listed as a "black urchin"

 

[Calappidae]

I was looking around the segrestfarms catalog and the closest thing I could find was Arabica punctulata..

Google has been awful to me lately..

 

[toddmau5]

Its kinda tricky, I thought you had it pinned with the rock boring urchin, then I started reading, and its definitely completely round and you can almost see a white band at the base of each spine like the reef urchin.

 

[Calappidae]

Its kinda tricky, I thought you had it pinned with the rock boring urchin, then I started reading, and its definitely completely round and you can almost see a white band at the base of each spine like the reef urchin.

Rock boring urchins do sometimes have white bands around their spines.

Although the color is misleading from what you have..

 

[Shawno]

I bought the same type of urchin you're asking about. It was labled 'pencil urchin' but im on here trying to learn more about it

 

[toddmau5]

The best I can tell about what I have is they are "Florida reef urchin" or gulf, I can't really remember, asked the guy at the lfs about them and he said they get them in on the rocks sometimes, they do go crazy Coraline,