Long spine urchin banished!

[musipilot]

Well...I finally banished our long spined urchin. He's been living in our reef tank for a while, and the only 'damage' he ever did was eat some coralline, which I tolerated, since it always grew back. But this afternoon...he had an arm of our orange linckia star in his little mouth, and that was the end! Into the hospital tank he goes, and I'll figure out what to do with him from there. Just a warning to all you long spined urchin lovers out there!

 

[adrian]

Most urchins are not predators, are you sure your star wasnt already dead when the urchin got a hold of it? How long have you had the star?

 

[byrself]

my black urchin tried to eat my choco chip star one time, i had to separate them, although this has been a while, and they are both in the same tank still, no probs since. i put some dead coral in the tank so the star could hide, and no probs since...
my star at the time kinda looked bad, had a fungus or something on it, and was losing some tentacles on the tips. but since the urchin was on it, and i guess the water conditions improved, the star looks healthy as ever, good color and growing tentacles, and the urchin hasn't bothered it... i'm wondering if the urchin would have just eaten the "dead skin", and left the star alone after that... the urchin did eat a dead/dieing anemone that my roomate threw in there. it was dead i'm sure..
jme

 

[musipilot]

The star is not dead, in fact he's doing very well. This urchin is strange...he loves to eat marine meats. We discovered this by accident when he got a hold of a piece of krill that floated by, and devoured it. Since then, we feed him silversides every few days, and he loves them. My plan is to put him in my larger aggressive tank in a few weeks, he'll love it in there.