Starfish?

My little girl (6 years old) spotted one on the glass. My wife confirmed it. When I got home, I could not find any. However, that means nothing; I probably have MANY. They have done no harm in my tank. What few corals and softies I have are and have remained intact.

 

Trust me...won't be long before you have many, many more...

But even then not likely you are going to experience any trouble with them...


Here is pretty good pic of them mowing down green algae on tank walls...just like a herd of cows grazing...:







8)

 

.......And what do you know. I just went upstairs to say "Hi" to the boys and guess what I saw? One of them thar little starfish. Guess now it is confirmed. I am going to let it go. If it get's out of hand, then I'll suck them out with water changes until the population decreases to an exceptable level.

Rock on......John.

 

Nice Xenia. Wish mine looked that good.

 

Cheers...

 

I used to have gobbs of them and quiclky found out you can't just smash them (like fresh water snails) and have them eaten, whats left usually recovers and now I have 2+. As mentioned, pull them as you see them, there's always more hiding.

 

I have had these in my tank since the day I put all of the LR in. They are for the most part beneficial, but they will munch on corals if they take a mind to do so.

The only problem I have had with them in the past few years was right after I added new corals, both of which were zoas that were added at different times. They have never touched any of the other softies in the tank which includes both leather corals and other types of zoas, only when I added those new ones.

I am still a bit bitter about the Tubbs Blues R.I.P.

 

i have never seen asterina stars cause any issues but i have read many people claim they eat corals (acroporas for the most part) but ill believe it when i see it! If they really start to overpopulate and you want them out you can get a harlequin shrimp to eat them as long as you dont have any seastars in the tank that you want to keep. The only starfish i found that harlequins dont seem to have a taste for are the Fromia sp. However that could just be the individual taste of my harlequin so i wouldnt really consider it a safe bet to throw a fromia sp. in with a harlequin shrimp. I just like to live dangerously

 

Hey Craig, have you had luck getting your harlequin shrimp to eat asterinas? Neither Roger nor I have ever seen them eat them and Omard here on 3Reef tried to train his to eat them with no success.

 

thats all my harlequin eats. You are welcome to see it first hand if you dont believe it All i did was for the first week i had the harlequin i would feed it asterinas with forceps. Now i just drop them in and he hunts them down. Every few weeks ill swipe a net along the overflow box in the shop and bring home like 100+ asterinas...As soon as i drop them in he comes right out and grabs like 4-5 of em heads right back to his little cave to feast.