Pencil Urchin help.

[egorr]

I have a bit of a problem. Can anyone help me with cleaning a pencil urchin. I had a small outbreak of green hair algae and I began removing it from my rock. I thought that I had removed all of it as I was scraping the rock but I must have missed some in the water because now my urchin is just a ball of green. Any ideas how I can get this off of it without killing it?

[Louis Z]

Pencil urchins spines seem very "sticky" to me when I touch them . Remove with tweasers as much as you can . I recently shutoff the lights on a tank due to a coral bleaching event . School air system switched off in Texas summer heat! But a lot of the algae disappeared . So if you could isolate him in a tank with live rock without lights for 3 to 4 weeks . You might see some hair removal .

[Louis Z]

Or leave him and call him cousin It

[egorr]

The tweezer idea might be my best bet. I was just worried about pulling on the spines and causing permanent injury. This was one of my first purchases for the tank and it has survived a lot of other mistakes and issues over the last few years. Thanks for the help and giving this creature a proper name. So "Cousin It" is now official.

[laverda]

Get you nutrient levels under control. Harvisting hair algae is a losing battle. It just ends up spreading it faster. What are you using to filter your water? Cleaning you mechanical filtration every 3 days will make a big difference in removing nitrates and phosphates as well. A simple cheap ATS can be built in your overflow or sump. Both will take time. Hydrogen peroxide rinse can be used to kill GHA or rocks you can remove. It will also kill copopds, brittle stars and sponges.small amounts of Hydrogen peroxide can be added to the tank directly on a daily basis to help control the GHA.