Baby Brittle Starfish

L

LOVETHISHOBBY

New member
Hi Everyone,

Greg is having a heck of a time with Baby Brittle Starfish taking over his tank. I'm talking hundreds if not thousands. He had a medium size piece of hammer coral that was doing great one day and the next day it turned to mush and he found a bunch of the Brittle's in the head. He's loosing one coral after another and neither one of us is quite sure what to do. Everytime he's working in the tank, he'll remove a pile of them. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. :confused:

The ones in question are pictured in the link below to the far right; third one down.

http://www.melevsreef.com/id/crawls.html

Thanks!!
 
I am no sure, I am sure he will get more and more as there must be enough food for them all. he will have to get something to eat them maybe? a harlequin or something . I dont know just a suggestion.
 
I have hundreds of those brittles (if not thousands) in my tank and have never had a problem with them. Are you sure it's them causing the problems Rob? I imagine they will eat something dead or almost dead, but I highly doubt they are killing things.
 
I have heard of them killing sleeping fish, or slower moving ones, but not coral. But I guess if he is getting over run by them, they could somther it and take food from the coral. I would have to second the idea of getting the harlequin. I put one in my 29 and he cleaned my stars up in a few weeks. If Greg has that many of them, maybe get 2 or 3. If he has some big stars maybe start by just pulling them out and let them die, or sell them on ebay or on one of the forums.

What size tank is it?
 
Thanks for the suggestions, I appreciate it

He has a 75 gallon with too many fish already, so a Harlequin would be too much unless he got rid of a few fish first.

I suspect that his phosphates; possibly nitrates may be too high making perfect breeding conditions. I plan on taking my test kits over to test and see what we can figure out.
 
When I initially purchased my live rock from the individual in Indy the rocks were covered in the things. They were so bad I had them all over in my pumps, ato switch...they were everywhere. After the rocks were in my tank for several months I noticed a shard decline in their numbers. My guess is that they simply isn't enough food in my system to feed them because I feed very little compared to most. The entire time though I had a frogspawn in the tank and I never seen them bother it or any other coral. My guess is that the real problem is water parameters if the tank is heavily stocked.
 
If he wants to get rid of some of them, I will take a few of them. That will help get some out of his tank.
 
The shrimps can be a little pricey but they are really cool, and not affraid of anything. When I put mine in, my arrow crab thought he would check him out, and the harlequin went right after him. It was really cool to see something so small try to rip apart the crab. The bad part of the shrimp, is that he was pretty hidden until the MH went out and he could start to wake up for a good meal of star fish.
 
Phil what did you do with the harlequin once there weren't many starfish for him to eat. I know that they are obligate feeders and will only eat starfish. It would be a good thing to have one and pass it around the club if anyone else has problems with them. As far as them being fish eaters......I know the large green ones are, but the pink ones you see in the lfs here are good scavengers. I have one in each tank and they are about the size of a dinner plate when spread out on the glass. I have only seen the whole body of one about a year ago.....all I see is the arms protruding from the live rock crevice he lives in at any given time.
 
I am not sure what happend to mine. I don't think he rad ut of food as much as I think he might have got stuck in the BTA. I would love another one, but the one star that I have now, I really like. It is one of the thorney red ones from Klaus.
 
I now that Exotic Aquatic in Kendallville has 1-2 harlequin shrimp in stock. If you don't where it is it's down town just north of the third stop light on the west side of the road.

I would also be interested in taking some of the micro brittle stars if you want to get rid of them.
 
I had a royal gramma that I once saw with a micro brittle star in it's mouth....not sure if it ate it or not, but if it was in the mouth if was probably lunch.
 
Cloran the Klaus Phil is talking about is the guy that owns the lfs here in Ft Wayne, Coral Reef Aquariums, I don't think it is your Klaus..... :) at least I don't think so.
 
Tested Greg's tank last night and all levels were good except for the nitrates which measured 80 ppm. I think we found the real reason the corals are dying. He will be taking the necessary corrective action to bring the level down.
 
Don't forget I have the sulfur denitrator. Would be great on an overstocked tank such as this.
My nitrates are 0 without it.
 
Rob, if thats one of the tanks you got off of me, I had it loaded with baby brittle stars. I never had a problem with the baby brittle stars. Its the Astera (sp.) stars you have to watch (Never had them). They are like the white brittle stars but they dont have the long arms. They actually go after the SPS colonies. If he has Astera stars, then I would remove what stars he wanted to keep and throw a harlequin shrimp in there until they are removed. Then remove the harliquin and throw the stars back in that he wanted to keep.
 
<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=13744908#post13744908 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by tazman71
Don't forget I have the sulfur denitrator. Would be great on an overstocked tank such as this.
My nitrates are 0 without it.
Click to expand...

Chad,

There is a thread on MI reefers right now that people are talking about this. If you still want to sell it, this might be your time.
 
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