HELP!!

SaltyShel · Oct 26, 2021

My pincushion urchin has been slow moving around the tank lately but he still moves a lot. Sometimes he will stay in one spot for a little while then move. Some of his spines were drooping and the ones that weren’t drooping were moving around like crazy. Then when I checked again after about 3 minutes, they were all normal again!! So I checked back after a few more minutes and they were drooping again!! I included some pics for reference… my nitrates are high and i haven’t been able to get a checker yet so I don’t know if they went up or down, but I’m about to do a water change. My salinity has been a little low for about a week or two, I’ve been adding salt water into the return chamber, instead of RO DI to try and bring it up. I’m afraid my urchin has something wrong… I’m looking into the best supplements to give him just in case he’s hungry, but I can get nori from right down the road, I just don’t know if it’s the right kind for him, since it’s people nori at my local grocery store. I am very concerned because I love my little urchin. Every now and then he will lay down some spines and it seems as if he’s cleaning them but I don’t know if that’s actually what he’s doing. It isn’t uncommon for him to lay some spines flat, but never this many at once!! I checked back just now (been about 5-7 mins since last check) and there is more standing up but still some that are completely flat. I don’t know if he’s okay or not. Please help!!

Fish Think Pink · Oct 26, 2021

SaltyShel said:
My pincushion urchin has been slow moving around the tank lately but he still moves a lot. Sometimes he will stay in one spot for a little while then move. Some of his spines were drooping and the ones that weren’t drooping were moving around like crazy. Then when I checked again after about 3 minutes, they were all normal again!! So I checked back after a few more minutes and they were drooping again!! I included some pics for reference… my nitrates are high and i haven’t been able to get a checker yet so I don’t know if they went up or down, but I’m about to do a water change. My salinity has been a little low for about a week or two, I’ve been adding salt water into the return chamber, instead of RO DI to try and bring it up. I’m afraid my urchin has something wrong… I’m looking into the best supplements to give him just in case he’s hungry, but I can get nori from right down the road, I just don’t know if it’s the right kind for him, since it’s people nori at my local grocery store. I am very concerned because I love my little urchin. Every now and then he will lay down some spines and it seems as if he’s cleaning them but I don’t know if that’s actually what he’s doing. It isn’t uncommon for him to lay some spines flat, but never this many at once!! I checked back just now (been about 5-7 mins since last check) and there is more standing up but still some that are completely flat. I don’t know if he’s okay or not. Please help!!

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You have a cutie! Yes people nori will work fine - tear a piece maybe smaller than 2"x 2", fold it up tiny and scoot it underneath an edge so he can take it. You don't want to give too much and have it go bad (though I think they'd still eat it...) Remember, if he eats it too fast, you can always offer more - in a super clean tank I might offer 1"x 2" daily. Defer to others if this is too much/not enough.

I feel what they most want and need is stable clean water and algae (food). Photos of your tank seem VERY clean, so I'd be leaning towards supplemental feeding.

Sadly I'm on pincushion #2 but I feel my purple #1 may have been starving before reaching me so my efforts were too late. #1 was dropping-off-his-body spines on day #1. My #2 is so much more perky - I bought him from our dirty LFS but the upside was lots of algae (dirty) in LFS tank to keep him well fed before #2 came to our home.