Baby brittle star?

[Firemedic1314]

I occcasionally view the dark areas in our tank with a flashlight. Today I seen what appeared to be a bristle worm. When I lifted up our Zoo, the one arm along with several other crawled back in the center of the Zoo. (the arms were all attached together) It was some type of brittle star i believe. We bought the Zoo on January 25th. We also introduced a brittle star into that tank in the beginning of this month. Do you think that this is a Zoo ride along or could this be from our brittle star? If it is from our star could there be more?

 

[Atarax]

oh no, im sure they were tag alongs, and i say "they" because if u look, and i mean REALLY look you'll probably finds TONS of em. they are great cleaners. and they will occupy every nook and cranny of your tank.

 

[Firemedic1314]

Do they get very big? Like normal brittle stars? What are the chances for survival?

 

[vetdog]

I've seen a few of these in my tank too.....are they all white and much, much smaller, but look exactly like brittle stars?

 

[Firemedic1314]

This one is striped, but about the size of a half dollar.

 

[greenbean36191]

These stay small and at the size of a half dollar would be full grown. They will not only survive, but reproduce prodigiously.

 

[vetdog]

nice

 

[Indermark]

I have these in my tank as well but only find them on colonies of zoanthids. I had a frag plug fall with some zoanthids on it and it was down there for a day and when I picked it up it had 10 of them small brittle starfish on it. are these eating my zoanthids? I have not seen any evidence of this but just asking.

Ryan

 

[Tennyson]

I have found 12 in my tank so far. They come in rocks, sponges, any coral (Mine have come in on Galaxea, xenia, yellow polyps, leather tree coral, and green star polyps and my toadstool) So they can be found in anything basically.

There are different types. My favorite one is the sponge brittle star which lives in a sponge cave in my yellow polyps rock. Feeding them is fun too (they eat mysid, silversides and other small meaty foods) Spnge Brittles are more of a yellowish color with brown stripes, one that live in rocks and corals have a burgundy band patter.