Pin cushion

[uurt]

Does anybody know anything about pin cushion urchins? Thinking about 1 for the tank.

TIA - Lee

[Brooke]

Here's a pic of our tuxedo urchin. These are great rock cleaners, nice to look at and well behaved. They tend not to bulldoze like some other urchins. They are easy to handle as well if you need to move them for some reason. If your tank is on the cleaner side it will eat coralline off the rocks..which is then spread around the tank on the um..back end..so to speak. hehe Not sure if pin cushion and tuxedo are the same or not.

http://www.thereeftank.com/photopost...09/5tuxedo.JPG

HTH-
Brooke

[uurt]

Thanks Brooke. The urchin i'm lookin at at premium aquatics is not the same as the tuxedo. They don't have much info about them just they should be reef safe and eat det, hair alga etc.

I'll keep lookin for info, and if I get one, all will know about it.

Lee

[Joel]

I had one for a year or so (pincushion) but mine liked to knock stuff down, I lost several lps corals from deing turned over in the sand by this critter. Back to the lfs it finally went and good riddance. just my observations and thoughts.

[tdwyatt]

Originally posted by uurt
Does anybody know anything about pin cushion urchins?

The tuxedo is Mesphillia sp., M. globulus I think, the "pincushions are usually Caribbean [i\]Diadema spp.[/i], although I am sure that there are some Indonesian spp. as well, I just dont see many of them being imported due to the problems associated with their shipping (my opinion). Although the Diadema spp. are great for cleaning the junk of new live rock and rocks covered with filamentatious algae, they are bad about pushing over loose corals and occasionally dislodging fixed specimens. I am not so sure that I didn't just lose a Heniochus spp butterflyfish to an accidental spining as well. Very kewl echinoderms, fascinating to watch, kids love them ("sweetie, keep yer hands out of the tank..."), and the grow quickly (an advantage???). If you're thinking about breeding Pajama cardinals or any of the Bangai cardinaols, these make great hosts for the newly ejected fry to protect them from the parents.

Reef safe, although they do bulldoze, and you may loose an occasional octocoral to one of them due to spine irritatiions. I would only keep them in tanks of 500 L (125 gal US) and up due to their adult size. I swapped one out with a breeder in Greensboro last year, I had to use an empty IO bucket for the transport, and it was a bear getting it out (very large).

HTH