Urchin Smoking

[sly]

A couple of days ago I noticed one of my pincushion urchins smoking... It looked like a white hazy substance was coming off it's body. It would quit for awhile and then start smoking again. It did this about 4 times. My green chromis took notice and swam directly through the smoke and acted like they were trying to eat it. Whatever it was, they definitely were excited by it.
I was afraid it was dying and might be poisoning my tank... but after a few days it's still doing fine and nothing is wrong with the tank. My guess is that it was trying to reproduce and that it was sending out sperm/eggs or whatever... Any ideas?

 

[calaxa]

If it looked like smoke, I would guess it's sperm. My sebae does this on occasion and can send a stream for quite some time.

 

[gsellers]

yes...most of the time they will do it in a bag on the way home from the store and it freaks people out. Hilarious if you ask me but he's sperming your tank up