Part of the problem with SS stars, are they are NOT scavengers. They dont scavenge, and they dont eat detritus.
They are PREDATORS. Meaning they hunt for their food. And generally they are not eating pods. They are eating the micro/macro fauna/infauna of your sand bed. The spaghetti worms, small animals less the 50 microns in size.
They hunt and eat all day long, every day. So you can imagine the damage he can do to a sandbed in a relatively short amount of time. And the less sand you have, the easier it is for them to reach everywhere in the sand, not giving your fauna the proper amount of time to reproduce.
They generally wont target feed either, because
1. They dont like dead food.
2. The food you are trying to feed them, is generally too big, and not their normal food.
SS stars mostly wont eat shrimp etc etc.. they just dont want them.
So what your gonna see is, that after months, and months, and months, and even close to a year, they will start to starve and die. A SS star, can deplete the life of a 75g 5 inch sand bed in as little as 6-8 weeks. After that, all you have is just sand, no fauna, and a dying star.
SS stars are not meant for this hobby IMO. They should be left in the ocean, or put into huge tanks of 200g or more, with at least 6-8" of sand bed, being recharged every few months, for continued HEALTHY existence of the animal.
And if you ever see a SS star not in the sand, and on the glass, he is starving. It means he is looking for food, and cant find it.
