Finding the "final boss" of coral pest hitchhikers, and how it turned into our beloved pet.

[C.Eymann]

I thought I'd share this experience as it is quite unique and unusual. Back in December of last year we imported a few boxes of WC Aussie corals to hold and monitor color shifts for potentially being put through our QT process and eventually added to our broodstock systems.

I was inspecting a large multi layered plate of m. palawanensis with some jewelers magnifying lenses before dipping and came across a tiny dime sized unique looking starfish that my brain immediately recognized. It was a baby crown-of-thorns starfish! (acanthaster planci) In my 18 years of working professionally in the industry, I have come across some wild hitchhikers but this was by far the most unexpected. A cute dime sized baby of one of the most destructive organisms to reef ecology.
Lucky my coworker has a desktop tank on our shipping counter that we keep such oddities in and he was on board with allowing me to keep this little reef devil in it.

https://imgur.com/NoK5Jlp

 

[C.Eymann]

We have been feeding it a steady diet of overgrown Acropora and montipora coral trimmings from the farm. It has gone from a dime sized baby to having a nearly 4in leg span in the past 6 months


Looks like my pics a bit too large to upload

https://imgur.com/0bPZELK

https://imgur.com/Lwh6Tcx

 

[C.Eymann]

Here is our pet reef monster chowing down on a colony of acropora paniculata

https://imgur.com/v2lUuPF

 

[wvned]

That is very special.

 

[Reefing102]

That’s pretty cool

 

[griss]

Wow, definitely the strangest hitchhiker I’ve ever heard of.

 

[Sugar Magnolia]

That's pretty cool!

 

[shred5]

Yea that is cool..

 

[Timfish]

Cool! Are you experimenting or researching to find an alternate food?

 

[C.Eymann]

Cool! Are you experimenting or researching to find an alternate food?

Not really, luckily we are probably the largest indoor coral farm that specializes particularly in SPS / Acropora culture, we have no shortage of overgrown scraps and trimmings of a variety of SPS coral. We are going to try keeping it for as long as we can, however I know these things can get pretty huge, we may look to donating it to a public aquarium if they want it or something, but keeping it fed will eventually become an issue I imagine

 

[C.Eymann]

Our little reef monster chowing down on a small spare colony of RRC pink cadillac we had crowding up a array. It's been growing pretty fast.

https://imgur.com/NW9h3cD

 

[griss]

If you’re really looking to get rid of frags