black spine urchin

[nero]

Does anyone know anything about black spine urchins? I have had one for about 2 weeks now and everything has been going great... except when I woke up this morning and checked out my tank, my urchin had dropped virtually all of his spines. I think that it is dying or something. This is my first urchin, and maybe my last. I added some more live rock (5lbs) about 3 days ago and it made my nitrates go up to 20ppm. By this morning they were down to 5ppm. Could the nitrate spike be a part in my urchin's loss of spines?

 

[saltcreep]

Yes, any kind of stress can cause the urch to loose spines. Hopefully he will pull through. How are your other parameters?

 

[nero]

Everything else is fine... its just the nitrates that were high. I hope that they are now stablized at 5ppm. Is there anything extra I could do to help my urchin? :notsure:

 

[saltcreep]

Did you acclimate him slowly? I do not think there is much you can do now but to keep everything stable and hope for the best. Try feeding him some seaweed selects. My Pencil Urchins like this.

 

[nero]

It took me about 45 min to an hour to acclimate him. I will try the seaweed recommendation. Thank you.

 

[acez28]

yeah it sounds like stress. I got mine on a live rock and didnt acclimate him at all....but he did grow fine and didnt stress anything.

 

[spline9]

The previous owner of my urchin said it had lost all its spines once. He didnt know why. It grew all its spines back and now, seems pretty healthy (as far as I can tell). It hasnt lost any spines since I've had it. It will recover if its just stress. Just give it some time.

 

[nero]

wow, my urchin seems to be getting better...
part of the skeleton is still showing (it ended up getting worse after all of the spines fell off) but its "skin" is slowly covering it again. there are a lot of new spines starting to grow again, they are about 3/4 of an inch now. Thank you everyone for giving me hope in the little guy, i thought it was over when all of the spines were on the sand one morning. Hopefully it will make a full recovery

 

[spline9]

 

[joker_ca]

i have the same urchin, and in my tank my nitrates are at 30ppm and my urchin is fine and growing huge
also twice he lost all of his spines but after awhile they grew back, hes 4 years old