rock boring urchin

I've got a black urchin. I've had it for several months. Not quite a year.

Anyway, I noticed some of its bigger spikes (like 3 or 4 of them) look a little like they're extended/pulled out a little. Like you can see the root of it (like you can see the root of a hair you pluck from your head, same sort of look).

These 3 or 4 are also limp. Just kind of hanging there. I also found one spike on the substrate.

It's been like this for a few days and it is still moving around the tank.


My only guess is that it is hungry and maybe starving/getting skinny. Making the exoskeleton kind of pull in is my guess.

I do not feed it directly. I have a ton of coralline it eats and it eat everything else the snails eat too... I have noticed it will eat meat if it catches it though.

So, anyone know what's wrong?

Should I be feeding it? Meat?

I like my urchin. Any info would be appreciated.

 

I would recommend feeding meat to see what happens, but I'm no expert on this; you'll probably want to ask Corailline or 2in10.

 

Do you give it sheet of nori ? Sometime they like it after it sits for a couple of hours in the water and added at night when they are the most active.

Spines falling out are never a good sign for a urchin. But urchins carry tons of parasites too and that maybe having an affect on it's nutritional status.

 

What are your nitrates at?

I agree with the nori suggestion.

 

my urchin eats nori, getting it to eat it is hit or miss, as they don't seem to go anywhere with any rhyme or reason... maybe tie/rubberband the nori to a rock and place it nearby the urchin.

One cool thing about feeding red laver algae to an urchin is it will poop florescent red. I noticed a lot more florescent red coralline in my tank after it started doing this... my guess is the coralline is picking up the pigment that is released from the algae somehow.

 

check to see if your temp dropped, params changed. sometimes placing them in a turbulent heavily oxygenated area helps perk them up too. Under the drain of your sump (do you have one?), is ideal. He isnt too old so you can rule out age stressors...

 

I did have a temp drop right before this happened. Tank dropped to 72. We had a cold snap and I forgot to turn my heater back on (it's usually warm enough I don't need it). It was low for maybe 10 hours (including the time it took to drop).

I've only noticed 2 spikes not connected. one on the ground and one in a sponge thing I have to stop bubbles from my HOB skimmer return. The urchin likes to hide behind it during the day and I noticed it must of got a spike caught.

I gave it some meat, it took that and ate about half of it. LFS didn't have any Nori, I am going back today to a different LFS to check for it. It's also still eating normally. I see its trails on the rock where its cleaning it to bare white rock still.

I hope it was just the temp. But will try the nori too.

My params have been solid.

 

he is going to be fine, just stress from temp drop, now that it is back up he will recover. get him back to work on the normal stuff, it isn't a lack of food in your tank...tons of coralline and that is fine for them. We had that happen to us at MACNA this year, we didn't realize the pumped so much ac into the convention hall to get the temp down before 1000s showed up...rock boring urchins displayed the exact symptoms. Under heavy agitation and a heater they all perked back up.