Reef safe urchins?

[ahmoser]

Are purple, pincushion, or pencil urchins safe for soft corals?

 

[frankthetank]

I was under the impression you have to monitor urchins in a reef tank. I thought overall they are not reef safe. I might be wrong.

 

[ophiura]

I would watch them all. The pencil is definitely not reef safe, IMO.

 

[wbsurfer101]

My pencil urchin is small but he dose his job and dosent mess with my corals

 

[bronco300]

what about the rock boring urchin...i think its the one i have in my reef, he is small, but doesnt touch a thing...or well not yet, i've been told he should be just fine

 

[sawduster]

Try a Tuxedo Urchin

 

[thegrog]

Originally Posted by sawduster
Try a Tuxedo Urchin
Have one in mine and he has left all corals alone. He eats some corlaline, but it grows back in a week or so.

 

[805puffer]

i have a pencil and he does good in my tank, but one time i saw him munching on my colt coral, so i just pulled him off and he hasn't gone back on it since(knock on wood).

 

[ninjamini]

I had 2 pencils, hitchhikers actually, that mowed down my yellow button polyps. I saw there there and then there was some missing. Then I saw him back and then there was 1 left. I pulled them out and now there is about 15 again and still growing. I threw the pencil urchins into my 12 nano to clean the lr I got from someone with hair algae. They made good work of that.

 

[ratrod]

The pensil urchins I had would rarely come out of the reef and be visable, unless the lights were off. I've had good luck with long spiny urchins, and nothing beats them for eating hair algea. The only draw back is they can tip things over. If your careful you can drop em right on an algea spot and they'll mow :joy:

 

[xnikki118x]

I had an urchin for like two years that was a black ball with lots of two-inch-long black spines. It was a 'rescue' from a friend's dying tank. It never ate anything but coraline, but it did knock the rocks over sometimes.

 

[ophiura]

Here is the thing.
Few will SEEK OUT corals to eat, but some, like a pencil, really won't care all that much if they are in the way. They plow right through. Others, like the blue tuxedo, are smaller and perhaps more dainty. IMO, all pose SOME threat to corals - particularly soft corals, though it may be a "keep an eye on." Their greater risk is in being bulldozers and collapsing your frags or rocks...and in some tanks, starving.