Prep For First Urchin?

[Urchingirl]

Hi! This is my first post on this forum. I'm going to be an urchin owner today! Any last minute prep I need to do before my urchin arrives? Thanks so much!

 

[Cthulukelele]

Welcome! What kind of urchin? How old is the tank? Other inhabitants? Plenty of algae?

 

[Urchingirl]

No other inhabitants! I do have plenty of algae in there, and the tank is about 6 months old. The urchin is a pincushion urchin.

 

[EithelSirion]

Lots of algae, and make sure that you have everything you care about firmly attached to your aquascape or it’s going on an adventure that may end with it dropped in the back corner of your tank

 

[Uncle99]

A sheet of algae attached to a rock.

 

[kevgib67]

Sounds like plenty of food, just make sure you acclimate it. Enjoy!

 

[Reef.]

I can just tell you what I did with mine, as I have heard they can be tricky to get through acclimation.

I floated the bag in the tank to bring it to temp, then slow dripped it for over an hour and a half, making sure its slow and the water is at least doubled/tripled in volume by the end…then I floated the container again to bring the temp back up again as the slow drip would have lowered the temp.

 

[Alexraptor]

Plastic cable guards can be worth looking into if you have any DC pumps with very thin and soft cables.

 

[PeterEde]

I've had a long spine urchin for 2 years now. It came as a 3mm baby urchin and is now 3" dia. It survived cycle.
My last live rock came with 2 rock borers and 2 decorators. I've lost one decorator a while back. No idea why.
So far I'm not seeing them as being that difficult.
Just let algae grow on the back glass. It will eat that and longspines love coraline algae.
Mine appears to know if it come near the surface I will also feed it nori. I slide it carefully between the glass and it's spines.

 

[Spare time]

Prepare for them to eat all your coralline and none of the algae you want them to eat.

 

[kyle38]

Woke up to mine with a new favia frag as a hat this morning. Pincushion is a great mower they get to be a good size though he’s a little bulldozer breaks branches off the birds nest and also eats coralline and GSP. Also have a tuxedo that’s a model citizen and a pencil urchin that is forever banished to the sump he goes straight for any coral and eats it

 

[formallydehyde]

Think of some fun names, have some loose stuff it can pick up to decorate itself with, have some algae on the glass so you be mesmerized watching its weird little teethies chomp it.

 

[PeterEde]

Top left of my 425XL. Has been with me since I put first live rock in at week 2. It was just a small ball of spines. Maybe 3mm dia.