I bought another urchin, which arrived today. This one is in the sump rather than the display tank, as it is too dangerous for at least the eel. It is a flower urchin, Toxopneustes pileolus. This is one of, if not the, most venomous of the sea urchins. It is reputed to have caused human deaths, and laboratory experiments with the toxin have demonstrated it to be very potent, at least in mice.

In any event, I got the urchin in today and set about acclimation. I use a bucket from...

A little over a week ago, I got in an Astropyga radiata. Common names are something like Radiating Urchin or Long Spine Blue Spot urchin (Live Aquaria seems to prefer the latter). They are strikingly colored, reputedly venomous and are fairly active during the day. It has been wandering all over the tank, and it appears to be at least sampling some of the algae that has taken over much of the rock and sand. Yesterday, however, it discovered the rock to which I tie nori to feed the two tangs...

Continuing along with my weaning training, I bought some PE mysis, thawed some and then somewhat painstakingly found individual mysis that were intact enough and not as mushy as others to be able to be pierced by the fishing line. The radiata sees that they are shrimp-shaped and have eyes, and are on the end of the line, which is good enough for him. Now to see if I can get him onto food that doesn't have eyes, like regular table shrimp. He'll need to be larger anyway, to eat the smallest of...

Diver's Den had a Pterois radiata for sale, and I snapped it up as soon as it was on the website. It was listed as 2 and 3/4", which is clearly including the entire length of the fish including tail. In any event, I decided to see if I had better luck than my LFS in keeping one alive. In a sense, I could not do worse.

Given that it came from LiveAquaria and it is a lion, I decided to forgo any QT. The radiata (henceforth referred to as 'he' even though there is no way for...

The radiata stopped eating in the LFS QT, and it died about 12 days after that. Likely cause was that the fish was collected too small and got damaged in transit. Chris tells me the collectors for the regions that the radiata come from tend to be fairly indiscriminate, netting what they can without regard to what has been requested in terms of size, or indeed at time, species. He says the distributor has another on hand, and he will get that one in. If that one is in poor shape, I will spare...