Anybody had success breeding sand stars

[Violet]

This may not be the right forum to ask this question, but has Anybody had success breeding sand stars? I found my stars like this last night, I have found that alot of people have seen this happen, but no one can tell me what to do to increase the likelyhood of success. Any and all help appreciated.

 

[mwp]

I'd be curious to know if anyone's done serptent stars...

Worst part is, I probably knew how these reproduced when I took invertebrate bio at Eckerd 12 years ago...

Matt

 

[GreshamH]

Matt, yes some one bred serpeant stars, but not on purpose. Mitch Gibbs (Dizzy on the forums - Designer of the Revolviong Aquarium) did and had it documented in "The Modern Coral Reef Aquarium" by Fossa and Nilsen. Not sure what volume though. Cute little guys, green/yellow/orange and red

 

[Galilean]

I've got reproducing brittle stars...never tried serpent stars but it can't be very differnt. It's not something I did on purpose so I have no idea what sort of reprodution success rate there is. I don't feed them directly and they don't grow very fast. I imagine if I determined the optimal food and had a plankton frendly enviornment for them they would bloom like a plague as starfish tend to do it the ocean. But I think almost all the larvae get wiped out in the pump before settling. Still, little ones keep showing up so a few are getting through on their own.

 

[mwp]

I actually have tons of "micro stars", those little white brittlestars, or black&white brittlestars (have 2 species it looks like)...it seems that the white ones are reproducing via actual spawnings/matings, whereas I think the black and white spikey ones reproduce by fission.

How I'd love to get my Harlequin Serpents to breed

Matt

 

[Galilean]

I have the white "comet" stars that are always losing legs reproducing. The brittle stars I think might also be the micro-variety, but these have brown central disks with brown, yellow and white striped legs. I've never seen one bigger than about a 1 cm central disk with maybe a 10 cm diameter including the legs. They mostly only come out at night. I've got a huge green serpent star at work. I wonder if I got more if they would breed or fight? So much of their lives are spent back in the dark spaces it's hard to know what is going on. With the host of worms in my tanks deadbodies are eaten within an hour so if a starfish, shrimp, urchin, crab or snail goes missing it's hard to decided who is to blame.