Urchin and Live Rock Input Please

[lunchie]

We have discovered we have a baby urchin in our tank. It probably was a hitchhiker in the live rock. Anyhow, I believe it is a purple urchin. It is about the size of a quarter right now. We mentioned this to the LFS this weekend and they freaked out and told us to take it out immediately because it would strip all of our live rock!

Is this true?

Thanks a bunch....

 

[mojoreef]

I wouldnt worry about them striping your LR, they do eat corraline algae but that just makes the algae grow faster. Some cons are that they knock stuff over and they do have poisenous spines, so dont bump into them to often or it will hurt.


Mike

 

[Burndawg]

They will eat the rocks an all that grows on the rock. but that will make it spead also. They are call rock boring urchin but like mojo said the biggest hassel is that knock stuff over and sometimes are very hard to catch.