Anyone have experience with this....
- Thread starter 200gallon
- Start date
Guygettnby
Well-known member
its a basket star and they are extremly hard to keep in captivity.
I have 4 feather stars, but not for long, several months only.
My red feather star is different from yours, lesser number of arms and it is not nocturnal, likely Himerometra robustipinna, Himerometridae:
What you may try: search engine's image search for "feather star" and red, crinoid red, or Poppe Images' photos of feather stars and then run search for the found Latin/scientific name.
It will be good, if it was mentioned together with sun light, because most of mine are nocturnal, except the red Himerometra.
I'll reuse part of my post at another forum:
Here you can see, how they feed:
Red dots are some smaller parts of dried Cyclop eeze, they should be able to fit the groove along the arm, in order to be delivered to the mouth. If too big - they can't be moved. Here is link to maximal dimension of the groove, 200 microns for the star, similar to the one on the photo, so food particles should be smaller (1), and main food for them in the wild was ciliates, forams and radiolarians.It is possible to culture ciliates, but I wasn't able to obtain the starter culture. Had to limit myself to the closest approximation - SS strain of rotifers, super-small (Reed Mariculture). Live cultures could be beneficial, having what lacks in dried food, but they took a lot of time.
Other food, that I'm using or used, that falls into the particles range - you may try another, what is available to you - was rotifers, frozen and bottled RotiFeast, later live SS rotifers, dried ZoPlan, powdered Hikari First Bites, frozen baby brine and decapsulated brine shrimp eggs, Marine Snow, EZ dried phytoplankton, DT's Reef Premium Blend (for very short time, cucumber had problem with it), bottled phyto 8-30 microns (Brightwell,until finished bottle), Reed Mariculture Nannochloropsis (same for rotifers feeding) and Shellfish Diet (same for enriching rotifers, adding to the tank should be in small doses or it affects water quality). Some water after washing mysis, Ocean Plankton, grocery seafood blend, sometimes frozen Reef Plankton (too big, like Cyclop eeze).
Feeding is done several times a day, especially after the lights are off. Automatic feeder would be better. At once amount should be not too high, for avoiding clogging the feeding groves.
Others fed Fauna Marin mixes, especially Ultra SeaFan, Liquid Life Bio Plankton, all tank or with syringe, different liquid invertebrate foods, including Marine snow and red bugs, Oyster eggs.
Here are links to the posts by keepers, who kept them for 2 yrs: 1, 3, same. And Nano-Reef has a couple of threads.
Articles about feather stars:
- Charles Messing's Comatulid Crinoids
- his article at Tree of Life
or go straight to diets page
- Animal Diversity website
- Ron Shimek mentioned, that salinity shouldn't be below 1.025 (mine is 1.026).
- excellent article by Bob Fenner
- Rob Toonen experience with Himerometra, the red one.
- here is short mentioning that the food particles should be within 50-500 micron, phytoplankton, protozoans, and crustaceans
- research paper on experiment with feeding baby brine
- food is mostly zooplankton
This gives some information to start with.
HTH
My red feather star is different from yours, lesser number of arms and it is not nocturnal, likely Himerometra robustipinna, Himerometridae:
What you may try: search engine's image search for "feather star" and red, crinoid red, or Poppe Images' photos of feather stars and then run search for the found Latin/scientific name.
It will be good, if it was mentioned together with sun light, because most of mine are nocturnal, except the red Himerometra.
I'll reuse part of my post at another forum:
Here you can see, how they feed:
Red dots are some smaller parts of dried Cyclop eeze, they should be able to fit the groove along the arm, in order to be delivered to the mouth. If too big - they can't be moved. Here is link to maximal dimension of the groove, 200 microns for the star, similar to the one on the photo, so food particles should be smaller (1), and main food for them in the wild was ciliates, forams and radiolarians.It is possible to culture ciliates, but I wasn't able to obtain the starter culture. Had to limit myself to the closest approximation - SS strain of rotifers, super-small (Reed Mariculture). Live cultures could be beneficial, having what lacks in dried food, but they took a lot of time.
Other food, that I'm using or used, that falls into the particles range - you may try another, what is available to you - was rotifers, frozen and bottled RotiFeast, later live SS rotifers, dried ZoPlan, powdered Hikari First Bites, frozen baby brine and decapsulated brine shrimp eggs, Marine Snow, EZ dried phytoplankton, DT's Reef Premium Blend (for very short time, cucumber had problem with it), bottled phyto 8-30 microns (Brightwell,until finished bottle), Reed Mariculture Nannochloropsis (same for rotifers feeding) and Shellfish Diet (same for enriching rotifers, adding to the tank should be in small doses or it affects water quality). Some water after washing mysis, Ocean Plankton, grocery seafood blend, sometimes frozen Reef Plankton (too big, like Cyclop eeze).
Feeding is done several times a day, especially after the lights are off. Automatic feeder would be better. At once amount should be not too high, for avoiding clogging the feeding groves.
Others fed Fauna Marin mixes, especially Ultra SeaFan, Liquid Life Bio Plankton, all tank or with syringe, different liquid invertebrate foods, including Marine snow and red bugs, Oyster eggs.
Here are links to the posts by keepers, who kept them for 2 yrs: 1, 3, same. And Nano-Reef has a couple of threads.
Articles about feather stars:
- Charles Messing's Comatulid Crinoids
- his article at Tree of Life
or go straight to diets page
- Animal Diversity website
- Ron Shimek mentioned, that salinity shouldn't be below 1.025 (mine is 1.026).
- excellent article by Bob Fenner
- Rob Toonen experience with Himerometra, the red one.
- here is short mentioning that the food particles should be within 50-500 micron, phytoplankton, protozoans, and crustaceans
- research paper on experiment with feeding baby brine
- food is mostly zooplankton
This gives some information to start with.
HTH
