Long Spined Black Urchin

I have had mine for about a year now and it is cool. One thing is they are not reef safe,I promise. the other is it has about tripled in size since I got it from tip to tip at its longest spines its probably 10-12 inches. the body is about 1.5 times as big as a golf ball. It is really neat though especially under the blue led lights. So if you got the room get it! And if you have a large hermit crab be careful. My hermit ate a lot of mine but he lived and looks great now.
 
Well mine doesnt touch my anems. but someone gave me a piece of rock with some leather on it and it WAS his favorite every day he would go to it and chow for a while then graze the rest of the tank so thats really all I can say in my experience with him.
 
i had one with lps corals and they grow fast when i got rid of mine it barly fit in a 5 gal bucket because its spines were so big. the other thing is it will clean your rock or coraline
 
no worries because that was my next question. so they will wipe all of the corraline away? i need that right?
 
they are ornamental, if anything. They will eat coralline. I used to have one when I tried my 125 as a fowlr. They will eat corals. Be careful

-Doc
 
You don't NEED coralline, but coralline does serve a purpose. It is very hard for nuisance algae to establish itself on rocks that are covered in coralline. The coralline and nuisance algae compete with each other. So the better coralline coverage you have, the more rare nuisance algae outbreaks will be.
 
if you really like the urchins, you could possibly look into a different kind, there are many out there. Pincushion is one common type. I don't have any experience with them but I have heard that they can get quite large and sometimes knock over rocks. I have a blue tuxedo that I just got and he is really tiny, so even if he eats coralline, he's in a 75g so I don't think he'll hava a chance to eat *all* of it. Some people have said yes, they eat all your coralline, others have never noticed. One guy even told me that his really loves hair algae. It is really up to you, if you love how they look, it might be worth it. But I would reccomend looking into a blue tux.
 
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