longspined urchine are they REALLY reef safe? I have doubts now

[Gigaah]

I have a long spined urchine. He's like 8-9". iridescent blue dots and also iridescent green on the inner short hairs that move around rapidly.
After I stuck him in he rolled over some zoa's and he stopped over them for awhile. Well they don't seem like they are comming back up. It appears that all the rock he decides to go over the coraline goes white as well.

Just how reef safe are these guys. I picked him up at the LFS, a customer donated him because he ate thier snails..not a big deal to me really. But if he's going to terrorize my rocks and zoa's then I don't really want to keep him in that tank. He is beautiful but i have my limits.

 

[yote]

Most urchins are reef safe.But that dont mean they are coraline safe.All urchins will eat coraline,especially if there is no other algae in the tank.
Pincushions like to pick up frags and crayy them around,while pencils tand to knock things over.

 

[Gigaah]

yeah I like zero algae so thats prolly why he's munching so hard on my rocks. Thanks.

 

[dcantucson]

Mine leave a white trail as well, but I have plenty of rock for them to munch on. I have two and I haven't had any trouble with them bothering my zoos. Good luck with yours.

 

[RyanG]

Urchins WILL eat zoas and palys when they run out of algae. Caveat emptor.

 

[Gigaah]

Im going to try and keep the thing fed with other items. But seeing as it has zero algae other than coraline to munch on I might have to either convince my gf it should go in the lion tank or have to get rid of it.

 

[Hiker4twenty]

I got rid of my short spine because it ate 2 of my corals. It completely killed one of my acan's with 10 heads and it also ate a portion of my porites. Fortunately the porites was able to recover. I say get one with caution. Long spines might be a little better, but I have no person experience with that species.

 

[Bifferwine]

I got rid of my short spine because it ate 2 of my corals. It completely killed one of my acan's with 10 heads and it also ate a portion of my porites. Fortunately the porites was able to recover. I say get one with caution. Long spines might be a little better, but I have no person experience with that species.

I read when you posted that when it happened, and was worried about my shortspine. But so far, I've only ever seen it on rocks in between corals and on the back glass. It does have a bad habit of ripping off corals that have been epoxied down!! This weekend I was on clean up duty, picking up all the frags it has thrown around.

 

[Hiker4twenty]

I read when you posted that when it happened, and was worried about my shortspine. But so far, I've only ever seen it on rocks in between corals and on the back glass. It does have a bad habit of ripping off corals that have been epoxied down!! This weekend I was on clean up duty, picking up all the frags it has thrown around.

Hopefully yours will be ok for you. Mine was fine for a few months then the problems came out of nowhere. They are quite destructive to frags and anything that's not glued down well.