Help! Blue Sea Star...

[bklynmet]

wenright - best wishes... wow 1 year in a 30g tank with little LR? goes against some of the earlier posts (where I don't know if they had a linka and were just commenting from what they've heard)... that's why I wanted to hear from people who actually had them in their tanks...

buster4900 - 1 hr? wow - makes my six hour acclimation seem drastic... thanks for posting...

i think there is good and balanced information being shared in this thread...

 

[Johnsteph10]

It is mostly a myth that there is a difference in the hardiness of most Linckia sp. - it almost always depends on the way it was shipped as the cheaper sp. are shipped much more poorly and thus tend to do less well in captitivity.

Linckia as a sp. tend to do fairly poorly in our reeftanks likely due to a number of factors.
1. We do not know what they eat. People say that they are omnivores/detritivores but in truth we don't know. That is why people say they need a big tank with lots of rock - chances are you would have enough of whatever in the tank to feed them.
2. They are extremely sensitive to changes in temperature and salinity - that is why you need to slowly acclimate them (over hours and hours). That is also why you need a stable tank to prevent fluctuations.
3. They do not die quickly - most of the time it takes months and they slowly rot/wither away from the tips inward. We do not know if it is from starvation, poor shipping/stress, etc.

I truly believe that only experienced aquarists with adequate resources should attempt most of them - even then I have my doubts.

 

[bklynmet]

Thanks Johnsteph10... that tip on them rotting from tips inward is something I did not know until now and something I will look for...

if we share how they are thriving as well, we would know what to look for to see if they are 'happy' or just dieing a slow death...

 

[mystikdragon7]

Linkias will starve in your tank over a very long period of time. They will last in your tank for up to a year and even year and a half before they just die. Linkias have an extremly fast metabolism and will eat non stop. When the food runs out in the tank they will slowly eat themselves and eventually starve to death. That is why I said 100bls of LR is good becuase it gives them more to grave on since we don't know what thier diet really is.