Fire Urchin sick?

[TamaraC]

This is my first post on the forum. Forgive me if I’ve posted in the wrong place. On April 15th, I added a fire urchin. It was vibrant in color. This week, we noticed that it appears to be losing color. Spines are intact. It has loads of algae to eat and does a great job cleaning the rocks.
Here are the tank specs:
90 display/25 sump
Reefmat and skimmer for filtration
Weekly 10% water changes
The number below have been stable with exception to calcium and magnesium. We’ve been trying to raise those slowly.

Tank is 5 months old
Temp 77
Salinity 1.024
PH 8.2
NH3 0
NO2 0
N03 20ppm
Pho 0.009 ppb
Calcium 430
Magnesium 1160
KH 10.4 dkh
Testing with Red Sea and Hanna

I know phosphates are lower than they should be. Algae seems to eat it up.

I’ve attached photos of how he looked on April 15th and as of today. This is an awesome creature. I don’t want to lose it.

 

[ISpeakForTheSeas]

Hopefully someone with more experience will comment for you here, but the only thing I have for potential advice is that this species of urchin (Astropyga radiata) is an omnivore - so if you're not offering meat in addition to the algae, getting it some meaty foods (like clams, for example) may help.

Section: Urchins: Group: Common Urchins: Species: Astropyga radiata (Red Radiating Hatpin Urchin, Blue Spot Urchin)

Marine Aquarium Library: Common Urchins, Order: Diadematoida - Family Diadematidae, Astropyga radiata

www.saltcorner.com

Red fire urchin - Encyclopedia of Life

www.eol.org

Hope you can get this guy back on track.

Welcome to Reef2Reef!

 

[TamaraC]

Hopefully someone with more experience will comment for you here, but the only thing I have for potential advice is that this species of urchin (Astropyga radiata) is an omnivore - so if you're not offering meat in addition to the algae, getting it some meaty foods (like clams, for example) may help.

Section: Urchins: Group: Common Urchins: Species: Astropyga radiata (Red Radiating Hatpin Urchin, Blue Spot Urchin)

Marine Aquarium Library: Common Urchins, Order: Diadematoida - Family Diadematidae, Astropyga radiata

www.saltcorner.com

Red fire urchin - Encyclopedia of Life

www.eol.org

Hope you can get this guy back on track.

Welcome to Reef2Reef!

Thank you, I will give that a try!

 

[Stomatopods17]

Are you sure its not just under different lighting?

I'm looking at blue spectrum lighting and dark rock vs. what seems like white spectrum lighting with light rock.

Fire urchin's blue spots fluoresce more in the blue spectrum if that's what you're referring to losing color.

Looks pretty healthy to me. Just be careful not to get stung this urchin in particular can be way more severe than your average long spine.

 

[TamaraC]

Are you sure its not just under different lighting?

I'm looking at blue spectrum lighting and dark rock vs. what seems like white spectrum lighting with light rock.

Fire urchin's blue spots fluoresce more in the blue spectrum if that's what you're referring to losing color.

Looks pretty healthy to me. Just be careful not to get stung this urchin in particular can be way more severe than your average long spine.

Part of that is the filter on my camera. I don’t remember how I took the first shot because I have several filters. The first shot was truest to coloring we saw. The lighting hasn’t changed much since the first picture. Now under blue lights in person, it looks like the second picture, slightly beached out. I’m going to do some research on whether potassium might play a role in its coloring.

 

[TamaraC]

Hopefully someone with more experience will comment for you here, but the only thing I have for potential advice is that this species of urchin (Astropyga radiata) is an omnivore - so if you're not offering meat in addition to the algae, getting it some meaty foods (like clams, for example) may help.

Section: Urchins: Group: Common Urchins: Species: Astropyga radiata (Red Radiating Hatpin Urchin, Blue Spot Urchin)

Marine Aquarium Library: Common Urchins, Order: Diadematoida - Family Diadematidae, Astropyga radiata

www.saltcorner.com

Red fire urchin - Encyclopedia of Life

www.eol.org

Hope you can get this guy back on track.

Welcome to Reef2Reef!

Color is coming back since we started giving him clam. Thanks again for the tip. He looks great and is growing much faster than anticipated. He’s going to need a new home at some point.