Urchin Plus

[KathyC]

Well, it's like this...I actually have 2 SW tanks, one is the 75 you already know about and the other is a 33g Oceanic Cube and it's been up since early last winter.
I will admit that I have a monumental hair algae issue in there due to overfeeding the snot out of the tank...yeah, I know better and did it anyway.:duh: Then the winter dragged on & on with everything being so gray and lifeless and here I had this wonderful lush green growth...oh nevermind...
:backtotop
It was so bad, that I'd considered whipping out my lawnmower and running over the tank, but instead decided to combat the issue by adding a phosban reactor, doing a ton of water changes, feeding smarter and way less and getting some critters to help now and in the future.

One of those critters is a Tuxedo Urchin...I am familiar with their tendency to get things stuck to their spines and was ok with it when I left for work today and my Urchin was 'wearing' 2 hermit crabs and some hair algae.
BUT, when I got home, he'd changed his decor to one of my AoG frags...with this I do have an issue...
How do I get it off of him without destroying it??

..and before I get told the AoG's are 'stretching' too far, I got them like that and am now providing the correct lighting thank you

One more thing..I am going to try a recently suggested method that I saw on RC (sorry MR) that suggests hair algae can be irradicated by raising the Magnesium level. I will be taking before (swallowing my pride) and after pics, as well as pics during the progression of the 'treatment', and yes, I will be monitoring it with a test kit!

Wish me luck!

 

[Deanos]

Reducing phosphates eliminated my hair algae problem, although my nitrates were still high. My magnesium was on the low side of the scale at the time.

 

[jhale]

you can just pluck the zoa's off the urchin, it won't hurt either one.
my urchin's do the same thing all the time.

good luck with the HA.

 

[SlamaJama]

just pull it off...lol...reefers, pfft...lol

 

[DEEPWATER]

when you were here the day of pick up,you saw the one in my tank .it had 4 diff zoos on it ,now its a x-mas tree of zoas .green centers zoos ,radio active .,pinks and red centers zoos .did you think your would do any less

pull them off and be careful the urchin doesnt pull you in the tank :lol2:

 

[alrha]

my urchins love decorating their backs as well. i have long tweezers to take everything off their backs - the junk i throw out and the frags i glue down. thats what i like about them, they do a good job cleaning up the tank, plus they know how to safely frag zoas.