Pencil Urchin..

[simple]

i just got a pencil urchin and a sea urchin from a friend for free but i dont know if i should keep them since i've heard they'll clean literally everything of your live rock, and at the moment i don't have any coral or mushrooms but i certainly plan on getting some in the near future. so my question is if the urchins are worth keeping and if they will allow me to create my reef aquarium without hurting the coral, anemone, mushrooms, etc.

 

[mr_X]

they won't hurt your corals, but yes, they will strip the rock clean. it's up to you if you want coralline covered rock, or white/grey looking rock. in the end your corals will cover most of it anyway i guess.

 

[cindre2000]

Pencil urchins are not bad. They don't eat much algae and usually scavange for most of their nutrient uptake. As for urchins eating coraline, as long as you don't fill your take with a whole bunch of urchins (relative to your tank size) you will still have coraline.

 

[simple]

Well right now i have them in a 12 gallon nano, and i have 9 1/2 pounds of live rock, so would it be good idea to take one of the urchins out and leave the other?

 

[mr_X]

Pencil urchins are not bad. They don't eat much algae and usually scavange for most of their nutrient uptake. As for urchins eating coraline, as long as you don't fill your take with a whole bunch of urchins (relative to your tank size) you will still have coraline.

i disagree. shavo had one in his 125 and he also has over 150 pounds of rock, which, until he got rid of the urchin, was stripped clean of everything. the whole tank was white. now it's all pink.

 

[shavo]

it is true I had an urchin in a 125 gallon and 150 pounds of live rock is underestimated, probabbly close to 200 lol! anyhow my rock never turned purple from coraline and when i decided to get rid of the urchin my rock is now nice and purple.

 

[cindre2000]

But it wasn't a pencil urchin, right?

 

[Anonymous]

Urchins are great for eating algae, and rearranging coral frags. Any frags you put anywhere will get knocked behind your rockwork! Mine eats any algae that gets in it's path. The cool thing is, I can put him in a spot where some nuisance algae is, and he pretty much stays there for a few hours and cleans that spot. When that spot is clean, I put him in my sump, so he can't eat all the algae I like.

I think every sump should have a urchin to do my work! I would not keep one permanently in the main display, though. I want to decide where my rocks go.

 

[ChrisRD]

Since we're talking about a nano here, personally I would not put an urchin of any kind in the tank.

As already mentioned, Pencils eat more than just algae and they're somewhat risky in a reef (if you do a search I'm sure you'll find some discussion about people having them eat corals). Tuxedos and Long Spines are good algae eaters, but Long Spines get big.

As for the coralline isssue - a lot depends on how fast your tank grows coralline (varies with lighting, Ca/alk levels, etc.). In some cases people who have rapid coralline growth have found that an urchin munching on it can actually encourage it to spread (increases spore distribution).

 

[cindre2000]

I wonder what would happen if you put a 2ft longspine in a 2 ft tank...

 

[ChrisRD]

heh :wink:

 

[simple]

so i guess the best thing would be to just get rid of them all together. I should probably just trade them in at my LFS but i doubt theyll give me much credit. Well if anyone on here wants them ill give them away for free..