Worry wart about my new tux urchin

[JoJosReef]

My tux urchin has spent the last 24 hours on the glass/return nozzles/intake at the top of the water line. It has been in the tank for about a week. So far, it seems to have eaten a bit of GHA, munched a little bit on codium and totally taken out my Botrycladia (really funny, it chopped it down at the base, and then wore one of the stalks on its head for a few days, which got shorter and shorter, because it seemed to be slowly eating it's Botrycladia hat!).

I'm a bit hyptersensitive about this urchin, because my previous urchin from several months ago lived about a week or two then lost all its spines and died--granted, there was an ATO malfunction that shot the salinity all around for a couple of days... Fast forward several months, and I feel like my 1-yr old tank has better stability, although I still have relatively elevated NO3/PO4 (25ppm/0.1-0.5ppm range). That seems to be improving with water changes, reduced feeding (i.e. more targeted feeding) and the growing macroalgae.

Anyways, here are some pics of the Tux. How paranoid am I?

 

[dedragon]

probably just getting a good amount of algae/food stuck to it because it is on the overflow, it will move if it gets hungry and runs out in that corner. Nothing you can do other than keeping parameters stable

Wait til you start worrying because it starts moving. It will pick up every frag you have on the sand bed, and prob toss a bit into your anemone just to tick you off. Mine hate me (the only reason I can think) and only take my most expensive corals and deposit them elsewhere, usually near an anemone, torch, or elegance coral

 

[Scorpius]

These guys love coraline algae and eat tons of it. I can't keep them in my 3ft 65 gal. tank because they eat it all and starve eventually. Just a heads up and your mileage may vary.

 

[killer2001]

If you are concerned about starvation you can always rubber band some seaweed to a rock, if he's hungry he will find it lol.

 

[bvanfish]

I feed mine nori sheets on a clip he loves it haha

 

[JoJosReef]

These guys love coraline algae and eat tons of it. I can't keep them in my 3ft 65 gal. tank because they eat it all and starve eventually. Just a heads up and your mileage may vary.

If you are concerned about starvation you can always rubber band some seaweed to a rock, if he's hungry he will find it lol.

I'm not worried about starvation. There is more macroalgae in the tank as well as GHA and coraline, and when/if that goes I've got a bag of nori waiting for the tux and my turbo.

I just worry about water parameters and their sensitivity.

And I forgot to mention. My tank runs really high Mg. Like >1600ppm. Weird batch of HW salt that mixes atypically low ALK (~7.5), normal Ca (490ppm) but super high Mg at 1.026 sg. I bought a huge box, so working through that and thinking of what should come next.

I love urchins, even my super lazy pencil urchin that just scrapes off the purple paint on the CaribSea Liferock. They make such a great addition to a reef tank!

 

[Bucs20fan]

He’s just doing urchin things, they love to eat off of plastic and any cords that may be in the tank, no need to worry!!!

 

[JoJosReef]

He's off the glass today and was just hanging off of a branch of codium. Absolutely amazing how they can stick themselves to something with just a few of their spines!

He has his "feelers" well extended, so I assume that means he's healthy.