Sea urchin care

[Rcracer20071]

Hi
I am thinking of getting a sea urchin, can someone explain from their experience what care they need?

 

[kay-bee19]

Most sea urchins in the hobby require some sort of algae to graze upon (to include coraline algae which they may prefer over nuisance algae).

 

[joy13]

What type of urchin are you thinking about getting? Live Aquaria

 

[Gti_Leo]

is algae can,t be provided supplement its diet with green nori sheets aka seaweed

 

[paulace2372]

I currently have three different ones in different tanks. Banded Mine Urchin; moves rock around in the tanks and causes a lot of works if in a reef, Knobby Sputnik; unusual looking & hardly ever see it & was a hitch hiker anyway and finally a long spine urchin. Lsu is the nicest but they grow very large. Never seen it move rocks or interfere with corals which I would say is likely due to the flex of the spines. All eat algae and the odd dead creature. Generally a nice safe creature in the tank but i would always make sure that the rock scape is stable and unlikely to be moved, urchins are a lot stronger than they look!

 

[Gti_Leo]

like a turbo snail lol those things are known to bulldoze rocks to graze for algae

 

[Rcracer20071]

Thanks for all the replies I am thinking of getting what I believe is called the tuxedo urchin

 

[melosu58]

Wrong forum. Moved to SW general discussion.

 

[MacDracor]

I have a tuxedo urchin in my tank. He's always picking things up and carrying them around. He actually fragged my zoanthids that way once. While he does clean algae off the back wall, he much prefers to strip a rock of all it's coralline algae. While he is very interesting to watch and look at, he can be kind of a pain at times, moving things that I don't want moved, and turning some rocks white with his feeding.