Pencil urchin spawning - is this bad?

[Silly clownfish]

I realized yesterday that my nitrates were sky high (57) which appears to have been due to a crash of bristleworms that had been in my overflow, I removed almost a full cup (8 oz) of live and dead bristleworms. That was already helping by today with nitrates down to 45.8 before I was able to do a roughly 20% water change. As I finished the water change, I saw what looked like angle hair spaghetti floating in the tank and being ejected by my pencil urchin. I can only assume this is spawning. Probably brought on by the water change, or maybe the fact that I needed to turn the light back up after “sunset”.

Any thought on if this means it is so stressed it thinks it is dying and needs to try to reproduce? I only have one pencil urchin in each tank, so that is not going to work

 

[StartingATank]

I could be completely wrong about this, but that is what my feather dusters look like whenever they spawn and work on making themselves a hard shell…. but I could be completely wrong. Hopefully your tank gets better

 

[KrisReef]

WIth all that algae growing on it's "pencils" it doesn't appear to be very healthy. I would be concerned that it was trying to extend it's legacy from it's death bed?

 

[Silly clownfish]

both of my pencil urchins tend to catch algae on the spines when I scripub and it is floating around the tank. There is almost not algae growing on any of my rock, so I worry more about it starving and do feed nori. its still moving around the tank so guess will know in a couple of days if it is on the decline. I’ve had this one for about 2 years.

 

[Silly clownfish]

And I didn’t think of it until the spaghetti had mostly dissipated (very quick), but did try to turkey baster some out and put in my other tank that has a pencil urchin. It’s a long shot, but seemed worth trying.

 

[Silly clownfish]

Pencil urchin seems happy today (not that they indicate any kind of emotion), but working around the tank