brittle stars and acro

[handapanda]

Hi,
I have a small acro colony that was rescued from a LFS that was going out of business. It didn't look great when I got it, but I put it in my brother's tank for quite a while and it started to look great. It got it's color back, had good polyp extension and was growing a bit.

Then, it started to lose some color and some tissue started receeding.

My brother gave it to me to see if I could do anything for it. It continued to decline in my tank, and a few days ago I looked at it really closely. I saw a couple of brittle stars on it. Which seemed odd. I decided to take the acro out and give it a FW dip. There were 8 brittle stars on it!

Now there are at least 2 more on it!

Are the brittle stars eating it? Are they just hanging out on it, and bothering it? Has anyone had this happen before?

 

[HMOOB]

Anyone has inputs on this?

 

[strike2867]

I'd guess the Acro was already dying. I have tons of stars and they don't touch corals.

 

[twelvejewelz]

Have any pics? I would think they may eat the dead tissue but who knows because there are about 2k different species of brittle stars. I doubt they would even touch it if it was healthy. Kind of like cleaning it up. If you can post pics of the stars and of the corals as well as tank info:water parameters and lighting and what not im sure we can be more of a help.

 

[SDguy]

Brittle stars or asterinas?

 

[crodger]

I have never seen this happen

 

[psteeleb]

most likely they are eating the dead tissue. I have lots of bristle stars and noticed they will gater in the deep crannies of a coral but only if there is die off. The population got big when I had AEFW's in some dense corals where the AEFWs ate away most of the heatly tissue and as the coral died off (or receeded) the bristle stars took over to consume the decaying residual. But they were only in corals that had a dense base, not on open structures.