Brittle star leg

[Mr31415]

As I was trying to gently pull out my brittle star from a piece of LR I was selling, by accident the one whole leg tore off. It fell to the bottom and laid wriggling on the substrate.

Now 8 hours later I fed my tube anemone some krill, and saw this leg starting to move crazily as if it smelled the food. So I placed a small krill on the tentacle and it twirled around it as if it was going to eat it - but it is only a leg!

Can this leg regenerate an oral disk? Will this leg survive - what is going on here??

 

[Blown 346]

Not sure of the leg will survive, but the star will grow another one.

 

[SCR]

I've heard of other star fishs regenerating, maybe you'll get lucky and have two after a while.

 

[usmc121581]

If there is a tiny bit of the oral dish it will survive if not its going to die.

 

[kenwendyb]

Normally the leg cannot regenerate unless someof the disc is with it. My brittle lost his leg and it moved around and tried to eat things for almost a month befor it finally desintegrated. We did water change and checked params. You can do a wait and see but make sure to keep params in check. We were hoping it would regenerate too. sadly, no.

 

[greenbean36191]

Some sea stars can regenerate from just a bit of leg. Brittle/serpent stars aren't true sea stars though. Regardless of how much of the oral disk there is they usually won't regenerate from a fragment with less than 3 legs. That's the minimum number they need to get around efficiently. The leg may go on moving and responding to stimuli for a few weeks but there is 0 chance of it regenerating.

 

[WWodyz]

ditto

ditto

same thing happen to me today, i literaly pulled one of its leg off. i guess i should just throw away the leg.