New Urchin

[dixaisy930]

I got a tuxedo sea urchin two days ago. After I placed him in the tank, he crawled up on a rock, and has been there since. He still has all of his debris (pieces of shells, plants pieces, etc) still on him that he had from the lfs. Is this normal for them to be this inactive? The tank is cycled, and has been set up for two and a half months.

 

[steelhealr]

No water parameters for us? Hard to say without them. Signs of stress in urchins include dropping their spines. He's probably OK if he hasn't fallen over. SH

 

[Opcn]

Echinoderms need to be drip aclimated.\, if you didn't do that it may bee doomed.

 

[Fish Fingers]

Agreee with what is said in above post. How long did you acclimate him for?

 

[Opcn]

also you do know that this species gets >90% of its nutrition from coraline algea right

 

[steelhealr]

I have a black longspine...they do eat coralline, but, when your tank is covered in it like mine, one doesnt' mind it at all. They WILL rearrange your non battened down corals tho'. SH

 

[dixaisy930]

Amm -0 nitrites - 0 nitrates - 5 phos -0 ph 8.2 salinity - 1.023

Yes, I did do drip acclimation, and yes I do know they eat primarily coraline algae.

 

[RoyalGrammaPrincessHannah]

You'll probably wanna bump up that salinity a little, but thats what my brittle star did when I first got him for about 2-3 days. Then he started moving around a lot. I acclimated him for about 4 hours, but I don't see anything wrong with 6 hours or more, besides the fact that I was going to bed. They just have to do a little of their own acclimating.

 

[steelhealr]

Sorry to be splitting hairs but it's my pet peeve...you are not using correct terms. The use of terms posted above is relating to SPECIFIC GRAVITY....not SALINITY. They are two different terms. Understand and use them correctly. Salinity is measured in percentage and is NOT temperature dependent. Specific gravity is a number IS temperature dependent. SH

 

[dixaisy930]

Oh, so sorry about that....

 

[Navarre]

Dont worry about it to much... I deserve a slap on thw wrist as much as the rest of you cos im forever saying the wrong terminology )

 

[Opcn]

RGPH, echinoderms should not do any aclimating on there own, brittle stars are the toughest of the non-elongated echinoderms but if you do not do a slow and complete aclimation it puts enormous stress on the animal and it often does kill them.

 

[RoyalGrammaPrincessHannah]

That seems a little unreasonable. I acclimated him for 4-5 hours which is supposedly long enough. I think it is perfectly acceptable for a new animal to be getting used to their new surroundings. I didn't want him left in the bag overnight, because of the oxygenation issue so I didn't have any other choice anyway.

 

[Navarre]

I think 5 hours is ok. Stars dont use much oxygen so your fears can be put to rest here. What many people do is to place the invert into a container and float it in the maintank. They then drip fed the star with tank water over a period of 5 or 6 hours. As the container fills up with tank water they simply cup out some water and allow more to drip in and thus dilute it further. 1 drip ever other second seems to work ok.