desintegrating starfish

[DCML]

Have had this starfish for a year or so.
Not sure what kind, it's bumpy orange with red center.
in the last 10 days or so it's legs have disintegrated to about half of normal.
It's in my refugium which has a fire shrimp and some small hermits.
I have not seen anything eating on it.
But I have seen small portions of it's legs on the sand bed.

Any thoughts

[inwall75]

Have you had a major swing in SG lately?

[dlaclo]

is it running out of food? i would try feeding it by a hand for a couple days and see if u see any improvement. i would also check all my peramiters and see if something is off.

[djnzlab1]

Hi,
So many critters can eat starfish, many shrimp and even some hermits may , another possiability is some type of heavy metal poisioning many salts and tanks are a soup of previous things that can reach toxic levels with time.Many things are difficult to skim out of water any of other inverts showing signs of stress.
Its possiable you had a decline in its food, many of the smaller critters like amphipods and copods can only seem to reproduce so many times and they loose the ability to procreate , I ve read that most experts are adding new cultures to help replace the olders cultures that are burnt out to help keep the numbers strong. Most tanks are pretty isolated so there's a potential for limiting factors within groups of old cultures of critters. In nature its so diverse that some species decline and then bloom its a cycle.

Doug

I found thia article about keeping them
Starfish: Considerations for the Common (and Commonly Misunderstood) Varieties by Anthony Calfo - Reefkeeping.com