Urchin question

[TheGreek21]

I'm relatively new to the hobby and saw an orange pincushion urchin at my LFS. they called it a "Halloweeen pincushion". I was wondering if it will eat coralline? I wanted to get him but I love my coralline algae

[Twistofer]

They eat coralline algae.

[jamesbaur13]

They will eat it, but I wouldn't worry much about it. That stuff grows real fast. You'll wake up and see a white scar where the urchin was grazing, but in a couple days it's filled back in again.

[ViktorVaughn]

They are really pretty cool to watch going about their business in the tank. My pincushion urchin (called pink rose at the LFS) is really active all day and always on the move, albeit pretty slowly sometimes if it finds a tasty patch of algae. I have a couple large chunks of rock that are covered in coraline but he doesn't focus anymore on those two rocks than other surfaces in the tank. Sometime within the last week or so mine acquired about 4 zoanthid polyps from one of my large colonies. Some of the polyps are really loose on the rock but still not really sure how it happened, it is pretty good with coral in the sense it will go around my brains and zoanthids rather than over them like my hermit crabs do. They can just be pretty clumsy with knocking rocks/coral over that are securely glued down or anchored really well. Here is a picture below with my goofball walking around with his new coral decoration he's got going on. I've seen him fall off a rock and land on the zoanthids, move through tight crevices, and get directly in front of a powerhead's flow but he is hanging on to those zoa polyps for dear life.


http://reefcentral.com/forums/picture.php?albumid=8282&pictureid=56471

[cloak]

Check this out.

http://www.reefkeeping.com/issues/2003-11/rs/index.php

HTH.