Black Urchin in Refugium DOH!!!

[csababubbles]

I have a two long spined black sea urchins in one of my tanks. I have them to feed my group of clingfish. Well those urchins LOVE to knock over my corals so I decided to put one of them in my sump/refugium because I have a ton of nuisance algae and slime bacteria in there (but none in the display). Oh and a huge ball of cheato. Well, what WAS a huge ball of cheato. Less then 2 days later the 24" diameter cheato I had growing in there sucking up all the nutrients from the water has vamooshed! I think I must have fell on my head because for some reason I did even give it a second thought that he would be urchin heaven in there with the cheato. So anyone want to share some cheato with me? lol

 

[dnjan]

Sure gives you an idea just how much those urchins can eat!

 

[csababubbles]

little problem has suddenly surfaced. i had a lot of red slime algae in the fuge which the urchin has completely gotten rid of in a matter of days. but now for the first time I am seeing this red slime in my display and spreading quite rapidly. this is not quite what I expected :-(

 

[Snowboarda42]

It woulda spread there eventually. Just a matter of when. Maybe your urchin knocked a piece into the return pump.

 

[Sherman]

Another consideration is that the chaeto is no longer competing for the same food source, so the cyano has free reign. Sounds like you'd better get some more chaeto in there! How do your nitrates levels look? You'll need to starve out that cyano to get rid of it.