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sea urchin spews white stuff


cardsfan12

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I have a rather large diadema sea urchin and noticed that it spews out a milky substance occasionally. I, of course, was concerned as to what effect this would have on my tank inhabitants. He has been in there for awhile and so far there are no visable signs that anything is wrong.

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Could it be that it's spawning!!??

That's the first thing that popped into my head, too. If that is the case I assume it would just be more tiny things in the water for my corals to eat, right. I wonder if they would have to have another one in there to reproduce or are they a-sexual? I don't know.

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Very cool!!.....free food for your fishes and corals. I think this requires more researching and find out about spawning cycle also identifying females from males.....This should be interesting to search around.

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Have you been changing anything in your tank lately?

I have a decent sized rock urchin and the only time I've had him do it was with large water changes. This was before I knew how to properly care for the tank, and would do 3+ gallon water changes on a 10gal tank. Fresh mixed saltwater, not brought up to proper temp. Now I mix the saltwater overnight with an air pump, and bring the water up to temp. Haven't had him do it lately.

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I had a urchin like in the picture that did that. It was right after I had my first saltwater aquarium and it worried me. It never caused any harm. At the time I did not have corals and did not think about the free food for corals.

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can you even tell males from female?

From what I've read, is very hard to tell the difference.....I've also read that one way to tell females from males....is when they're spawning. Males release a white cloudy substance (sperm) and females release a more visible egg-like substance. It does look different from what the pictures depict.

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