Rearing Sea Urchins

[Heliocidaris]

I'm a phd student doing some genetic studies on a species of sea urchin.. i need to keep wild adult urchins in tanks until im ready to do some cross-fertilisation studies.. my problem is keeping them alive until i need them!

I think my problem will be feeding.. i dont have a big fancy tank complete with a mini-reef in there.. theyre just empty glass 50L tanks... if i just put in some algal-covered rocks from where i collected the urchins from, will they be able to happily graze off the rocks/glass walls??

does this even make sense?

[aquawolf]

Welcome to TRT!

Yes, it makes sense. If you put algae covered rocks in the tanks straight from the ocean, then each time you do it you stand a very good chance of causing another cycle due to the die off of living things on that rock. If the ammonia level rises too much then the urchins will die. Your best bet would be to go ahead and get the tanks established and fully cycled first, so that they are stable environments for the urchins. Algae will grow naturally in these tanks, but you can also supplement using dried seaweed (here in the states we call it Nori and it is just unflavored sushi wrap).

I have no idea what type of time frame your study is going to be done under nor what type of equipment you will have, so this is just my first inclination of how to go about it. I am sure there are others on here that will pitch inand help get you going in the right direction as well.

I hope that helps.

[VWD]

Only thing I will add as Aquawolf covered it already



You don't have to have a fancy set up, Have decent water flow and a good amount of live rock, Not new live rock every time you feed and do water changes .

[Loverotties]

They said it all!

[Heliocidaris]

Wow okay awesome, thanks for your help guys. Much appreciated!

[kofrederick]

i have a black long spine & a pink tuxedo urchin. when the tuxedo was in the reef it stayed small since he rarely ate. now they are both in the 72g fish only. my lion fish get shrimp and the urchins love it. the tuxedo has doubled in size.

[tlgreve]

I'm giving my pink urchin pleco algae pellets (hikari) and nori to keep him full so he won't eat as much of my coralline.

[Suziq21]

Hi! A friend of mine did his MS on urchin larvae, but he had to keep adults alive to spawn. His setup was super simple, much like everyone else has said, he had 2, 10 gal tanks with HOB filters. He used nori and veggies from the grocery store to feed the adults. HTH