Feather Star losing legs!!

Finally got my phosphates down and my salinity up to 1.024, now a couple days later my feather star has just lost 6 legs today heading to run every test I have.... AGAIN! Probably the 6th time in the last two weeks! I've had her for 4 months and I target feed twice a day. Sometimes Julian Sprungs Marine snow sometimes zooplex by Kent. Seems to love it, opens right up to feed, has been very active today and yesterday. Any thoughts? I'll get back to ya with the test info in a minute. All previous tests were great accept for low salinity (was 1.022 for a few days, took a while to get it up slowly in a 29 gallon tank) and phosphates were 1.0, but have been since start up. (LFS said not to worry about it). Now that they're down to .2 feather star is losing legs

 

all i have read about feathers stars is they are an expert only species, that they do not like any nitrates and will drop legs when nitrates are raising. i have never purchased one but did read a bit about them and decided to pass on it. since i always have some nitrates. they are very cool looking creatures, i hope you can find out whats bothering it.

 

I haven't yet heard of much success from anyone with feather stars. they just seem to be one of those creatures that withers away and dies in aquariums. I think the salinity changes are probably what started it's downward spiral. All starfish are pretty sensitive to salinity.

Michael Rice
Marine Engineers Aquarium Blog
Sent from Tapatalk so excuse my poor English

 

Thanks for the info guys. It doesn't sound promising from what you've said. She was doing AWESOME until about 2 weeks ago. I bought her because her legs were all nibbled up in the dealers tank, I had no fish yet and I figured she would have a better shot with someone who could baby her for a while. She was growing bigger, moving arround, opening up more and the tips of her legs were growing back. She seriously looked way more healthy than when I got her. We've had nothing but bad problems ever since we moved our tank about 2 or three weeks ago. We didn't have a choice, it was at Jason's parents house & they wanted their own tank so we had to move it. (There are two of us who post on this profile, this is Tina, Jason is the other.)

Ok I see the problem. Salinity dropped to 1.020, it was 1.024 this morning and I have not made any changes to the tank at all in 3 days accept adding a coral (but not the water from it) and a few blue legs. I don't understand why it dropped like that, any ideas? How can I stabilize it? Also the nitrates are up slightly at 20 mg/l don't know how to fix this either except a water change and I'm getting arguments about that from jason, we share the tank. my ph is a little low too 8.0 so I'm adding a teaspoon of ph stabilizer tonight. It's a 29 gallon biocube. I also added two cups of water with specific gravity of 1.026. Is this enough to get that up without spiking it? I'm seriously tired of stuff dying that was doing very very well before the move. I am showing no amonia, less than 0.2 nitrites. Is a water change the only way to get the nitrates down? Trying to talk Jason into doing one early cuz I think it will correct nitrates, PH and salinity. Any advice would be greatly appreciated thanks for all your help guys!

 

HA HA HA! YAAAYYYY! Feather star is looking MUCH better!!! The legs are growing back and so are the "feathers" on them Opening up again for food and starting to look good Got my salinity up and stable (had to remove my skimmer) and just kept target feeding with room temp Julian Sprung's Marine Snow twice a day. I might actually pull this off!

 

Good luck...I don't know of too many who have had luck with these animals...they are very sensitive and very difficult to feed...even when they appear to be feeding they will only actually consume particles in a very specific size range...in most cases they don't receive enough to eat and very slower wither away.

 

Yeah, I know. I just love it when the LFS tells you "Oh yeah, they're real easy to take care of" just to get you to buy something they KNOW is just gonna die on you. But I am encouraged by the fact that it's actually growing again instead of just losing legs & "feathers" off the legs. It hasn't dropped any in about a week. I tried several other foods like zooplankton and Kent's Reef Snow, but the Julian Sprung's Marine Snow is the only one that seems to make it grow. Thought I'd share in case it might help someone else who was dumb enough to listen to their LFS like me

 

PS. They also LOVE live copepods. I have a couple of mandarins and before I got them to eat frozen blood worms I had to add the live copepods (tiggerpods) every few days. Everytime I did the feather star went NUTS, like a little kid stuffing gummie bears in it's mouth.