Tuxedo Urchin good for my nano tank?

ScottyD36

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I have a 13.5 gallon fluval evo nano tank. I been dealing this past week with bubble algae and hair algae popping up in my tank. My tank is currently stocked with a clown fish, wheeler goby, pistol shrimp, cleaner shrimp, 3 hermit crabs and a few different snails for my CUC crew. I have read that Tuxedo Urchin are amazing at eating up algae. I am looking for a more natural way to deal with the problem and i think this may be the right choice. My only concern is if i may be over stocking my tank by adding a urchin. Also looking for peoples personal experience with the tuxedo urchin. Is a 13.5 gallon big enough for it, is it peaceful where it wont knock corals over and will it be fine with my current in habitants. Any help with my current tank and a tuxedo urchin fitting in would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance.
 

SMSREEF

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Tuxedo urchin will eat coralline algae too. I had one in a 60 gal and it was devastating my coralline so got banished to the sump.
It also picked up frags and other things that were not really secure. I would not add one to a 13.5.

An Emerald crab will eat bubble and hair. But I would manually remove what I could first. I bought one of these for my 10 gal nano after manually removing as much bubble algae as I could. He ate any new stuff. After 4 months returned to LFS so he wouldn’t starve to death, or eat my corals when the food had run out.
 

Hugh Mann

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I can't say whether or not a Tux is a good fit for a 13.5, however this is my experience with a small (2") Tux in a 55.

They eat some algae. They'll start with coralline. I had a rock 95% covered in deep purple, and over 3 days this Tux ate it down to bare, white rock. After that, it cruises the rock work, sniping coralline wherever it finds it. Along the way it eats green film algae, spends most of the time on the rock, rarely touches the glass. I have bubble algae and bryopsis, and all it does to those is pull it up and wear it for camouflage.

They can and will pick up anything loose in the tank, whether that be unsecured frags, shells, hermit crabs, snails, whatever.
 
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