My starfish is dead

[Runner]

No sooner than I tell you guys about my brittle starfish at the last meeting than I stop seeing him reach out for food. It's been almost a week and no arms reaching out from rocks. I am not about to pull apart everything to find his carcus, though, even as big as he is. I've noticed a little extra cyano growth in my sump, but the surge has died down. I reckon I should check nitrates and see if they bumped.

He had ~8 years of life as near as I can tell. So perhaps he died of old age instead of careless rock re-arrangement...

I'll give him some time, then probably go out and find another like him. I would miss not having a monster hiding in the rocks grabbing the detritus and extra food the fish miss.

 

[skwirl]

thats horrible...

 

[EvilMel]

That does suck...but 8 years! That's great!

 

[Runner]

Yeah. I now have to worry that any replacement will eat my fish. This "gentle giant" had a yellow clown goby play in his hole and he left it alone. I suspected he had eaten that goby when I couldn't find it for a month. Then I cleaned out my overflow box and guess what was in there?

It amazes me that my tank can handle a death of this magnitude and not show any detrimental effects to the inhabitants. The more I think about it, the more I regret not checking water parameters last night. Now I will worry the rest of the afternoon. If it still shows 0 nitrates, then I may have to pull the rock apart after all...

 

[Chris_Campbell]

ouch that sucks man! but you at least got 8 years with him thats something.. wow

 

[Runner]

Well, he was only mine for almost 5 years. The other 3 years were with the previous owner of my first 50 lbs of live rock and my maroon clown.

Aquarium has a nice looking brittle star for sale -- green. I that a problem critter or is it just the green serpent stars that are the predators?

 

[ct_vol]

Which are those green ones with the reddish purple bands on them??? I picked up a sponge in FL with at least 4 or 5 of them on there... Hopefully they're going to be friendly... To be safe I put it in my rather empty nano for now... Plus the sponge came with an unidentified Nudi... I'lll try and get a pic if my camera still has batteries... lol

 

[Runner]

You are not going to believe this, but the monster is alive!

I was reaching into my internal overflow box to pull out some cyano and my fingers hit something hard. I pulled the box out and there the thing was! Aparently he had slipped into the overflow and liked it so much there that he stayed. He has apparently been there almost 3 months.

I dumped him out into the tank and he moved quickly back under the rocks. I am glad I haven't gotten around to replacing him yet. This is pretty cool.

 

[stevensmd]

good deal!!