Blue Tuxedo urchin breeding success!

Shawn.B · Sep 22, 2019

@chad vossen Very cool! What strain of phyto are you feeding these little guys?

chad vossen · Jun 4, 2020

Another success

chad vossen · Jun 4, 2020

Shawn.B said:
@chad vossen Very cool! What strain of phyto are you feeding these little guys?

They are fed t iso phyto as larvae

hotdrop · Jun 4, 2020

How long do you think it would take for one to grow from penny to inch size. Ideally I’d keep small ones and cycle them out they make a great cuc when small

Larry L · Jun 4, 2020

chad vossen said:
Another success

I can't see the photos.

kyleinpdx · Jun 5, 2020

chad vossen said:
Another success

Larry L said:
I can't see the photos.

Yeah photos didnt upload or link correctly. Whats the latest news?

minus9 · Jun 5, 2020

Great work! I love to see success stories like this, especially now. Keep up the great work!

chad vossen · Jun 5, 2020

Not sure what happened with the photos in that last post, they're not showing for me either now. I'll try again!

F i s h y · Jun 5, 2020

Love this thread. Would you mind putting together some info on your system for grow out, your process, and what is needed so others (like myself) could give it a try. Collectively maybe we can insure higher success rates. Great work!

r20crazy · Jun 5, 2020

u selling? could use 2 or 3 small ones

chad vossen · Jun 7, 2020

r20crazy said:
u selling? could use 2 or 3 small ones

Yep, sending a PM now.

chad vossen · Jun 7, 2020

hotdrop said:
How long do you think it would take for one to grow from penny to inch size. Ideally I’d keep small ones and cycle them out they make a great cuc when small

Just depends how much algae you have. A well fed urchin will go from penny to quarter size in about 50 days. A tank with little algae, the urchin may take 100 days to grow to quarter.

Copingwithpods · Jun 7, 2020

Wow man just wow, congratulations!

PurpleMonsterSlayer · Jun 7, 2020

chad vossen said:
Once I lock down the blue tux urchins, I want to tackle other popular cleaners, such as astrea snails.

i dont think you will have a problem with astrea snails there always reproducing in my 20 gal. ive been trying to find out what im doing right or wrong in my 90gal where the turbo snails are always reproducing

SaltBabies · Jun 7, 2020

Chad that is just awesome.

Mtk1988 · Jun 7, 2020

This is a really cool thread its so amazing to b able to see something like this happen in captivity keep up the great work!

Bill Capman · Jun 9, 2020

chad vossen said:
Not sure what happened with the photos in that last post, they're not showing for me either now. I'll try again!

For clarity, these red-spined blue tuxedo urchins were raised by me and my students in my marine breeding lab at Augsburg University in Minneapolis.

Chad has been a tremendous help to us for several years as we have gotten things up and running, and as we have been climbing the steep learning curve, and he is helping us a lot now too by selling these urchins for us (he is set up for selling and shipping, we are not).

Chad has been just great! We are so lucky to have had his help with many aspects of what we have been doing in our lab.

We also got some really tremendous help with figuring out how to get feeding levels correct for the larvae from Tim Morrissey at the Omaha Zoo. Without Tim's help this past summer and fall, it would have taken us quite a few more attempts before we would have had success getting the larvae through to settlement.

This was our fourth rearing attempt. The first time we had phytoplankton levels too high, the second time we had great larval development but only one larva settled (who happens to be one of the fathers of this batch of urchins we raised that are shown in my photos above), the third time we underfed and starved them (I think), and on this last attempt we succeeded in raising up 229 little urchins.