Unknown- looks like starfish??? Help ID.

[jasno999]

Unknown- looks like starfish??? Help ID.

Ok. SO My tank was in need of some cleaning today. I decided to do some pruning and re-aranging. I also dug down into soem sections of my sand bed to just get it agitated and ewhat not.

Well I am looking at the tank about an hour later and I see this white thing on the glass. I look closer and notice it is moving and it looks like the center section of a starfish. It looks like a starfish that hads all it's legs broken off and had basically a mouth left and a few small leg sections....

I have no freakign idea what it could be. I used to have a large brittle star in my tank but it dissapeared about 2 months ago and I figured it was dead. It was brown and huge. This thing is white and tiny....

Here are some pictures. Hopefully somebody can ID it.

[mandarin11]

It looks like an asterina starfish.

[omard]

While the jury is still out on the danger of Asterina Starfish. Some varieties appear safe, some not.

I have finally decided the ones inhabiting my tank are the benign ones.

Only issue I have is keeping the population of them under control.

I must have pulled thousands of them from tank over years.

Usually do when siphoning water during water changes when they are easy to suck up off glass.

Literally hundreds overflows, which probably is a good thing.

They are great glass cleaners.

Here is pic of current "herd" hard at work eating algae off side of tank. No harm to coraline at all.

Close up,

Have decided to just live with them, keeping population under control so snails still have enough to eat.

For some reason they mostly like one side of tank more then anywhere else.

Lighting?

Who knows.

Note: Harlequin Shrimp Will Not Eat!

Asterina Wega

Nardoa and Asterina spp Sea Stars

There is some controversy over the Asterina species sea stars, which can multiply to great numbers in reef aquariums. Most aquarists report no problems with them, but some claim that they eat SPS corals and make every effort to remove them. There are more than one species of Asterina and it's speculated that some species may be harmful. It's also speculated that the Asterina sea stars will consume SPS corals once they reach a certain density. I happened to put a Nardoa species sea star into a small reef aquarium that contains a large population of Asterina sea stars. I discovered that the Nardoa sea star regularly consumed the Asterina sea stars. The Nardoa sea star san be a good biological control for those aquarists that want to reduce their population of Asterina sea stars.
GREG SCHIEMER

Starfish: Considerations for the Common (and Commonly Misunderstood) Varieties

Asterina sea stars have been accused, unfairly at times, for preying on coral tissue. While some individuals appear to eat some desirable reef invertebrates, the problem may be a simple matter of an opportunistic predator adapting to a change in the available, preferred foods (worms, algae).

Returning to our example of the common, small Asterina species found in some reef tanks, these sea stars in recent years have suffered, unfairly I might add, the reputation of being risky or just plain un-safe in the reef. This is interesting because for many years prior to that, they were not only regarded as harmless, but beneficial! What happened? Did they all change their voter registrations overnight? No, the answer really is quite simple. It also explains why some other "controversial" reef invertebrates have contradictory reputations like Mithrax/Mithraculus crabs. Many such creatures are opportunistic feeders. While they favor one type of prey that is convenient or popular to us, like sand bed worms, brown diatoms or bubble algae, they will adapt to eating other food items following the reduction or absence of a preferred food item. Thus, the reef keeper with a persistent growth of microalgae in a garden reef display will likely have less trouble with misbehaving omnivores than another aquarist with an aggressively skimmed and scrubbed tank that supports little growth of the matter. In a phrase, the hungrier that a so-called "reef-safe" creature gets, the less "reef-safe" that creature becomes. In the case of Asterina, many years ago during the bare-bottomed, nutrient poor Berlin style era of reef keeping, reef husbandry with early protein skimmers and limited nutrient export processes was not as efficient as it is today; diatoms and other nutritious growths grew quickly in our tanks. And Asterina were not considered un-safe by hobbyists.

Anthony Calfo

Originally Posted by Matt Rogers

Well this is not the first time I've seen my asterina starfish on my montipora but I did notice the trail behind it this time. I am about to declare them guilty of slowing munching my Montiporas...

but first, I submit pics to the court of 3reef. What say you?

Originally Posted by Gresham

guilty

[missionsix66]

My buddy has these starfish and he can't keep polyps in his tank. They eat them like candy.

[Dador]

I saw a few in my tank about 2 months ago but none since. Snails eat them? Anything else? Mine seem to be gone.