Blue Tuxedo urchin breeding success!

[chad vossen]

It's been a while since our last batch of urchins, and I've been trying several times this past year to do it again. Turns out there are a lot of factors involved in urchin aquaculture. Broodstock health is crucial, including diet and conditioning. There are still several factors that I have not worked out, so each batch is still a bit of a gamble.
On Friday May 17th, I induced a spawn with the urchins in my office tank. These urchins are from my first batch, making this batch second generation aquacultured. Within two hours, you can see that I have variable cell division, probably due to eggs being collected from two separate females. I think they look a bit like snowflakes at this point

​

A few hours after, the mass of cells have developed into spheres.

​

Initially, the urchins will grow two arms, followed by two more arms. Here we can see two fully developed arms, and two shorter arms growing in.

​

Video here -

By day 9 or 10, the urchins now have 8 arms as seen in this video

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Here's a short clip at day 11 or 12


By day 13, we start to see urchins starting to settle out of the water. In this video, you can see the stages of settlement. The urchins have what look like two tube feed that will grab hold of a surface, then they molt and leave behind their arms. At this point, they are just a ball with tube feet. They will quickly develop spines along their bottom, which migrate out over the surface of the urchin. This process is quick, taking only a few hours based on our observations.



At this age, they are the same size as your average copepod!

​

Then within a week, their spines become better developed, and they resemble the familiar urchin look.

​

After a few weeks, they'll really start to grow and color up.


We expect this batch to be ready by August. After two months, they are about pea size, as seen here.

 

[Kyl]

Super neat!

 

[Larry L]

Awesome work @chad vossen ! Did you induce spawning with a temperature change?

 

[dansreef]

Cool! I need to get a couple for my tank. I had long spines a few years ago....that used to spawn all the time. But they got so large and were not in a very big tank ... so I re-homed them. It would be cool to get some small blue tuxedo urchins... and let them grow into the tank.

 

[chad vossen]

Awesome work @chad vossen ! Did you induce spawning with a temperature change?

Yep. Temperature shock is easy and harmless to our broodstock urchins. Some of the broodstock urchins are loaned to me by other hobbyist, and they expect them back

 

[Justfebreezeit]

Very very cool!

 

[dwest]

It's been a while since our last batch of urchins, and I've been trying several times this past year to do it again. Turns out there are a lot of factors involved in urchin aquaculture. Broodstock health is crucial, including diet and conditioning. There are still several factors that I have not worked out, so each batch is still a bit of a gamble.
On Friday May 17th, I induced a spawn with the urchins in my office tank. These urchins are from my first batch, making this batch second generation aquacultured. Within two hours, you can see that I have variable cell division, probably due to eggs being collected from two separate females. I think they look a bit like snowflakes at this point

​

A few hours after, the mass of cells have developed into spheres.

​

Initially, the urchins will grow two arms, followed by two more arms. Here we can see two fully developed arms, and two shorter arms growing in.

​

Video here -

By day 9 or 10, the urchins now have 8 arms as seen in this video

​

Here's a short clip at day 11 or 12


By day 13, we start to see urchins starting to settle out of the water. In this video, you can see the stages of settlement. The urchins have what look like two tube feed that will grab hold of a surface, then they molt and leave behind their arms. At this point, they are just a ball with tube feet. They will quickly develop spines along their bottom, which migrate out over the surface of the urchin. This process is quick, taking only a few hours based on our observations.



At this age, they are the same size as your average copepod!

​

Then within a week, their spines become better developed, and they resemble the familiar urchin look.

​

After a few weeks, they'll really start to grow and color up.


We expect this batch to be ready by August. After two months, they are about pea size, as seen here.

That’s the bomb!

 

[Hemmdog]

Super cool!

 

[tgrick]

Truly Wonderful. Spectacular.

 

[Peace River]

This is awesome! This reminded me of Martin Moe’s MACNA talk from last year. Any updates?

 

[Silver14SS]

Very cool! I'll keep a watch for when these are available

 

[chad vossen]

This is awesome! This reminded me of Martin Moe’s MACNA talk from last year. Any updates?

Nothing new yet. Lost a significant amount of them due to the macro algae I was feeding crashing and wiping out the main tub. I do have a bunch of the baby urchins in a separate tank doing well. Going to start a new batch really soon.

 

[Silver14SS]

Is there a waiting list or anything? I'd love to add a couple of these to my tank!

Thank you so much for continuing to aquaculture despite the challenges

 

[AquaRaider44]

Hey, maybe when you raise these you can teach them that it is not nice to steal the frags and move stuff around.

 

[Breadman03]

This is really cool! I'm all for breeding what we can to reduce our impact to the oceans.

 

[pjb9166]

That's so cool.

 

[laverda]

Good job and great photos! I wish you continued success. Like others I would be interested in a few young urchins. My single long spine urchin has spawned several times recently. I assume I would need at least two for there to be any chance of baby urchins.

 

[Cassian]

wow! I would like to do this with mine! I have one that used to release sperm with a water change! how do you keep the eggs while they develop? do you have to feed them anything? how do you collect the eggs? do you have to combine sperm and eggs from different urchins? sorry for all of the questions, I know absolutely nothing about urchin breeding. any good articles you would suggest?

 

[chad vossen]

This is really cool! I'm all for breeding what we can to reduce our impact to the oceans.

I 100% agree, and the tuxedo urchins are by far the best example of this. If I get this right, I could produce thousands of urchins every year, replacing the supply of wild tuxedo urchins with captive bred specimens. Eventually, urchins may be as inexpensive as turbo snails. Just think how much fuel is used to gather and ship 1000 urchins from the reefs to the USA.

Once I lock down the blue tux urchins, I want to tackle other popular cleaners, such as astrea snails.

 

[EW_Fish]

I 100% agree, and the tuxedo urchins are by far the best example of this. If I get this right, I could produce thousands of urchins every year, replacing the supply of wild tuxedo urchins with captive bred specimens. Eventually, urchins may be as inexpensive as turbo snails. Just think how much fuel is used to gather and ship 1000 urchins from the reefs to the USA.

Once I lock down the blue tux urchins, I want to tackle other popular cleaners, such as astrea snails.

This is extremely cool. What is your back ground?