asterina starfish.

[dorian965]

i have some in both my tanks. i keep them for a year with no problems until two days ago. i looked in the tank with the lights off and saw about 10 of them chowing down on my kenya trees. they left black spots where they where eating. also saw a white path across on off my sps where they had killed it.

DO NOT KEEP THESE IN YOUR TANK IF YOU WANT CORALS!!!!
i have 2 different species and have observed both eating hard,soft, and lps corals

 

[dorian965]

this is one of them. cant seem to find the other right now, (killed a lot)

 

[dorian965]

trouble posting pics.

 

[ms_ k]

Hey, let me know if you can round up a bunch of them. I'll take them off your hands and put them in my mantis tank.

 

[dorian965]

well, i dont really have a lot but ill start colecting them. should be able to round up 20 or so.

 

[ms_ k]

Cool...I'll send you money to ship them. I'll be in ATL on Sunday, but I don't know where and don't know how far that is from you...don't know anything about lagrange

 

[gwen_o_lyn]

Here is a pic of harmless (non coral eating) asterinas and great for cleaning up your reef.
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<legend> Attached files </legend>

 

[dorian965]

picture???

 

[gwen_o_lyn]

drop and drag didn't work, so I had to edit the photo for basic upload.....

 

[jmaneyapanda]

dorian965 wrote: i have some in both my tanks. i keep them for a year with no problems until two days ago. i looked in the tank with the lights off and saw about 10 of them chowing down on my kenya trees. they left black spots where they where eating. also saw a white path across on off my sps where they had killed it.

DO NOT KEEP THESE IN YOUR TANK IF YOU WANT CORALS!!!!
i have 2 different species and have observed both eating hard,soft, and lps corals

What do you think caused these to suddenly start eating corals? Not to discount your observation, but I feel many times people blame the clean up crew for the death. I have seen many accounts of cleaner shrimps killing clams, or turbo snails eating acro- this is likely just misguided interpretation. These animals are far more observative to situations like this, and may start to eat detrtious or nrecrotic tissue before we can even see it.

I guess my only point is, we should be careful about making speculative judgemnts like that, as we may not know the whole truth. just my opinion.

 

[dorian965]

pic 1: is a hole left after the half eaten tissue was washed away. was higher on the tree but the tree has receided because of tisue trama.

pic 2: seperate location,seperate tree. black spots are where i removed the stars.

pic 3: is the other starfish i have. same size but mostly in the 30 gallon. have only seen them on the frogspawn. they get around the bae of the flesh and also any tiny branchs that start to form. i can see a few tiny colorful tenticles start to form and after the starfish feed on them at night, they are gone and nothing is left but the nub.

i cant get a pic of the hard coral becuase it has completly bleached but there was a definat line across it where i pulled the starfish off.



I pulled them off of my corals. the corals were fine the night before. i actually saw them feeding, no room for misinterpretation. as for what caused them to do this i do not know. i would have never suspected them. i have plenty of algae growth. believe or not. im just telling you what went down in my tank with no unsertainty.

 

[dorian965]

having probs with the other pics.

 

[dorian965]

cant load them,!! heres a link.

 

[sprayin70]

I have a hitch hiker star fish he is in time out now until I figure out what he is. He looks like a baby serpent star with black and grey bands around his arms.

 

[jmaneyapanda]

dorian965 wrote: pic 1: is a hole left after the half eaten tissue was washed away. was higher on the tree but the tree has receided because of tisue trama.

pic 2: seperate location,seperate tree. black spots are where i removed the stars.

pic 3: is the other starfish i have. same size but mostly in the 30 gallon. have only seen them on the frogspawn. they get around the bae of the flesh and also any tiny branchs that start to form. i can see a few tiny colorful tenticles start to form and after the starfish feed on them at night, they are gone and nothing is left but the nub.

i cant get a pic of the hard coral becuase it has completly bleached but there was a definat line across it where i pulled the starfish off.



I pulled them off of my corals. the corals were fine the night before. i actually saw them feeding, no room for misinterpretation. as for what caused them to do this i do not know. i would have never suspected them. i have plenty of algae growth. believe or not. im just telling you what went down in my tank with no unsertainty.

Dorian- I was not doubtin that they were feeding, but my question is are they feeding on healthy tissue, or necrotic tissue? If you have watched them move over healthy coral, and when they leave it is dead, so be it. I have had asterinas in my tank for years, and do not have a problem with them eating corals. Perahps we have different species.

 

[tsciarini]

I have a ton of them in my 156 and have never seen them munching on a healthy coral. I did however see a few making a meal out of a dying acropora. As jmaneyapanda mentioned, I don't think they typically make meals out of a healthy coral.... but things surely do happen.