Urchins and Reef Tanks - help

Hi - we just put coral into our tank for the first time today. We just caught our urchin on top of our coral. do we need to get rid of him? are they not coral safe?

what type of urchin?

Most urchins are reef safe, but every once in a while they go rogue and will munch coral (I had a purple and white short-spined urchin go after coral). If there was a lot of algae on the rock that the coral was then it might be going after the algae. Once the urchin moves off the coral I'd just look to see if there is any tissue damage to the coral - if not then it was probably just after the algae, but if there is tissue damage, then you might need to turn in the urchin. Urchins are also notorious for toting around coral frags that aren't glued down!

+1 Fishy

I have two in my tank and every morning I have to do a quick inventory of corals and frags because my booger of an urchin likes to tote frags and such around the tank. It also rip out some frags that were epoxied or super glued as well.

I have found that if you give the urchin some goodies to carry they leave stuff alone. I use small rock frags, empty shells and things like that. I hand them to the urchin directly he grabs hold and never lets go.

At one point I was giving mine fun stuff like a googly plastic eyeball and a tiny little plastic top hat LOL

AmberSunrise said:

I have found that if you give the urchin some goodies to carry they leave stuff alone. I use small rock frags, empty shells and things like that. I hand them to the urchin directly he grabs hold and never lets go.

At one point I was giving mine fun stuff like a googly plastic eyeball and a tiny little plastic top hat LOL

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1+ I have seen the same behavior.

AmberSunrise said:

I have found that if you give the urchin some goodies to carry they leave stuff alone. I use small rock frags, empty shells and things like that. I hand them to the urchin directly he grabs hold and never lets go.

At one point I was giving mine fun stuff like a googly plastic eyeball and a tiny little plastic top hat LOL

Click to expand...

I just got one today. I'll have to try that. Right now he is in the sump. Doing a good job cleaning up some algae and stuff.

AmberSunrise said:

I have found that if you give the urchin some goodies to carry they leave stuff alone. I use small rock frags, empty shells and things like that. I hand them to the urchin directly he grabs hold and never lets go.

At one point I was giving mine fun stuff like a googly plastic eyeball and a tiny little plastic top hat LOL

Click to expand...

I just got one today. he seems to be super happy/active since the moment i dropped him in. I dont have much in my tank, but hes been moving all over the glass & rock. I plan to have some type of coral in my tank at some point. Hopefully the orchin is "nice" to the corals. lol