urchins

[yote]

Just got home from a Cub Scout camp out and found an urchin munching on somw algae. LFS says they'll eat my coralline and really good for a reef tank. I think it looks cool and my son has been watching it for the past 2 hours. What is y'all oppinion? Take it out or leave it?

 

[jhnrb]

If the urchin is a long spine, could damage corals, if a pencil could topple corals or displace things, but, urchins are very good at what they will do, and that is they grind the rock to remove the algae and stuff and leave it bare so more alga will grow. They will also grind grooves in acrylic tanks there by increasing the visual effects of alga growth as your scrapers will not clean out the grooves. Now as to weather you should keep um or not, is a personal choice. They are cool animals but do have a few draw backs as mentioned. good luck.

 

[kimoy]

i had same problem. took it and moved it to my fuge....

 

[jcg432]

I have an urchin that I was thinking of moving because it was moving my small rocks around but I really like how they look and did not want to get rid of it. So what I did is that I got heavier rocks for my display and now I have the urchin and nothing gets moved around. It actually changes shape to fit squeeze through my display.

Here is my :twocents:

Good Luck!

 

[yote]

I decided to get rid of the urchin ( after putting spine to thumb ). lol I'll learn to look before I reach into the tank to do stuff. Thanks for Y'all replys