urchins
 

I got a couple of sea urchins about a week ago, they were happy and cleaning the glass, then a few days ago they lost all there spines and do not seem to be moving. One of them looks dead the other almost dead. I checked my water temp salinity and amonia and everything is OK. What did I do wrong?:question:

As far as I know, I think that once you notice them loosing spines there done for. I think its a stress thing, they can be very sensitive. How long did you acclimate him? I acclimated my first one too fast and it lost its spines in less than a week and died. I bought a second and did it much slower and he's been in my tank and do fine for 6 months now.

I've had urchins loose spines and return back to normal. More than likely your urchins starved, either not finding adequate food in the tank or previously starved from the supplier or a combination of both. I'm not sure the film type algae that grows on your glass is enough to sustain an urchin and unless algae is plentiful you are limited to how many you can keep in a certain size tank.

What size tank? Exactly how many urchins? How old is the tank?

help
 

Thanks for taking the time to help. I just dropped them in the tank. My tank is 50 gallon it has been up and running for about a year. I got them from another reefer. His tank looked very good but he was downsizing. I think they are dead but I am trying to understand what I did wrong.:cry:

help
 

My wife wants to know of any good recipes for urchins but I have told her that I will be giving them the traditional flushing ceremonies :lol:

Bingo.

For any inverts I reccomend drip acclimation...float the bag for 15-20 minutes until temps of the bag water and your display match. Then empty the contents of the bag into a bucket (or in our case we use a 5 gallon fish tank). Get about 5 or 6 feet airline tubing and knot one end, but not super tight...start a syphon from your display into the bucket/smaller tank and let it drip through the knot about 2-4 drips per second. When the volume of the water doubles in the small bucket/tank take out half and continue to drip until the water volume doubles again...this whole process should take anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour....then you can release the inverts into your display (or quarantine etc)....

it seems like a really long, drawn out process....but it's worth it in the end.

Hope this helps!

Some urchins are more sensitive than others but they are undoubtably one animal that needs a good careful acclimation.

i have two in my 180g that has been up for 8 months. one was added around the 4month period and other at the 6month. i drip acclimated them.

When i got the first guy, his spines were all broken off and lost but he grew them back super fast. the second one I got has these massive zoas on his head and most people dont notice him there.

here is a pic
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/2361330/Aqua...-13/Urchin.jpg

in the queen cahrletts I had urchin roe the Haida call it Gudeni - it was rich - so mine have nothing to fear.