My Starfish is disintegrating

[MassLambresa]

I have a starfish that decided to lose one of its limbs a few weeks ago but it has been fine since and moved about as if nothing was wrong. This morning I woke up to find that it had started to disintegrate on its remaining limbs but it was still moving about pretty freely. I know when they die that they lose their colour and the orange goes dull, but he is still pretty bright.

I have a Fluval Reef M60 91l tank which has been running for over 5 months now and the Starfish has been with me for 2 months.

My water parameters are as follows:

Salinity - 1.022
Ammonia - 0
Nitrite - 0
Nitrate - 80 (I have fitted a bio filter and performing water changes to lower this as it was even higher a few weeks back but dropping all the time now)
Phosphate - 0.05
P.H - 8/8.2

Can anyone shed some light as to if he is dieing or this is natural as I have read that they can drop their limbs and they grow back.

Picture below:

 

[Nina51]

your tank is still very new. it's likely he has depleted whatever was in the sand bed for food and now, he's starving to death.

 

[MassLambresa]

Hi Nina, thanks for your reply. I've tried looking up whats best to feed him but haven't found anything very helpful on this. Do you have any recommendations on what too feed him and the best way to as my shrimps tend to try and eat everything in view

 

[snorvich]

your tank is still very new. it's likely he has depleted whatever was in the sand bed for food and now, he's starving to death.

This, unfortunately.

 

[snorvich]

What it needs is a larger, much more mature tank.

 

[DjScRiBbLe]

Poor starfish. Your tank was not ready to sustain a linkia by any means. They don't eat prepared food and live of bacterial film in the tank. At this point its probably best to remove it before it pollutes the tank by rotting away.

 

[Nina51]

not sure if it's too late for him but you might see if the lfs would take him back. even if they won't give you a refund, it would be better than him dying slowly.