The Purple Urchin has a mouth with five teeth underneath its body so it can graze on algae quite easily, and the waste is excreted from the top of the urchin. The Purple Urchin poses spines all over its body to keep the predators at bay. Not only this, the Purple Urchin consists several small, sticky and hardy visible feet shaped like a tube that helps it to move along the rocks using hydraulics. Since they love to graze over algae, it is actually considered as ??grazers of marine algae??. Additional phytoplankton, kelp, and occasional tiny mussels proved to be beneficial for its continued health growth. The purple sea urchin has five teeth which form to create Aristotle?s Lantern. The Purple Urchin is basically a nocturnal animal and does all the predation and grazing at night. As during the day, it mostly spends its time hiding or taking refuge on live rock works, therefore we suggest you to keep some live rocks and caves. The Purple Urchin is not compatible with crabs, sunflower stars, snails. The Purple Urchin is a moderate reef safe species and may bulldoze the corals present the tank, therefore we suggest you to keep these urchins only in a bigger tank to avoid any congestion. The Purple Urchin thrives well in a temperature range of 72-78 degree Fahrenheit, and a pH of 8.1-8.4. Nitrate and copper in the water has proved to be lethal to the Purple Urchin and is advised to have a control over it.

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The Purple Urchin is a small Urchin that is dark purple in color with medium-sized spines, which are tan in color. These Urchins are nocturnal and do most of their grazing at night. During the day they will usually stay stationary on the aquarium glass, or in hiding spots in rockwork. All Urchins like lots of rockwork that they can crawl and feed on. They are excellent algae eaters.Urchins belong to a Class known as Echinoidea, which consists of creatures that have a skeleton made of ten plates covered with spines. Urchins have mostly round bodies with protective spines on their upperside and tubular feet and a mouth on the underside. Artistotle once wrote of the five parts of the Urchin's mouth: "In reality the mouth-apparatus of the urchin is continuous from one end to the other, but to outward appearance it is not so, but looks like a horn lantern with the panes of horn left out." This holds true today as the mouth of the Urchin is referred to as "Aristotle's Lantern". The mouth of the Urchin is used to scrape algae from rockwork. The spines of the Urchin are a defense mechanism that are barbed like that of a fish hook and can inflict serious pain to the predator. These spines can either come to a sharp point or can be stubby and blunt.

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