Feeding our basket star

[Postal]

We got this basket star a little more than 4 months ago. A LFS found it clinging to a large gorgonian in an order they received. Luckily the store is good enough that they wouldn't intentionally bring in an animal with such a port rack record in captivity. WhenI asked about the starfish upon noticing it on the gorgonian, they gave it to me for free since they knew I would do my best to keep it alive.
I know it can take a long time for them to go downhill, but after 4 months I am beginning to have some hope. With a lot of help from my wife, we feed it every night when the lights go out and every morning when we first get up. The basket star seems to have the best feeding response with mysis. We can even hand feed it the jumbo mysis.
Let's hope our luck continues and we can keep this beautiful creature alive and thriving.

 

[Calappidae]

Very good! keep us updated! This guys are probably one of the if not THEE hardest thing to keep alive long!

 

[Nina51]

so pretty!! good luck with him, looking forward to updates.

 

[Moort82]

I had the same thing happen to me and managed to keep one going for 3 years when I was a beginner. The only thing I would say is check with the guys in the non photosynthetic section as I know a couple of them have these in their tanks, but I don't think Mysis is a food they would actually eat. I can't see it bringing any into its mouth in the vid (maybe really small particulate pieces) but they need much smaller food sizes as far as I'm aware. They have a habit of capturing food, tasting it and then letting it go again when they decide it isn't what they need. So basically they are extremely finicky and require almost constant fine particulate food in the water column.
Well done on giving it a go and the success you've had so far. Good luck.

 

[Postal]

The flash from the camera was irritating it in the video which is why it wasn't expanded all the way as well. We have tried foods from phyto up to mysis. The mysis gets the strongest reaction and it definitely eats it. What limited research I could find indicated they take larger prey than most aquarists think. Crinoids aka feather stars require much smaller food items and that is where I think the confusion begins. Basket stars are just modified brittle stars. If you look at them closely you can see they have evolved to catch copepod/isopod/mysid sized prey. Their physiology just isn't appropriate to catch phyto and rotifer sized prey items.