Different urchins

[Perthegallon]

I assume this is probably a dumb question but I scuba dive in York Maine a lot and see tons of urchins. I recently just got an urchin for my tank and it was from FL. Are there different kind of urchins that live at different temp water or are they pretty resilient and live everywhere? I know the Aquarian near by grabs them and puts them on display but never checked if they put it in there reef tanks or keep them cold as well

 

[coralboi56]

I assume this is probably a dumb question but I scuba dive in York Maine a lot and see tons of urchins. I recently just got an urchin for my tank and it was from FL. Are there different kind of urchins that live at different temp water or are they pretty resilient and live everywhere? I know the Aquarian near by grabs them and puts them on display but never checked if they put it in there reef tanks or keep them cold as well

Like most families of organisms, most families are widespread. Just as there are fish that live in the arctic ocean, there are fish that live in the tropics. Same with urchins. Californias kelp forests have longspine urchins, so those can obviously thrive in colder waters than our tanks.

As for finding urchins specifically that can live in cold water, that's a harder tasks. Most sellers sell to the market, in our case, tropical waters (76-82 degrees), so it's a lot harder to find things that need a cold water environment