Sand sifting star getting eaten

JonV88

New member
So a couple of weeks ago I noticed the tip of my sand stars leg missing didn't really alarm me the following week half his leg was gone I let it be then my red fromia got a chunk eaten from one of his legs so naturally I accused my peppermint shrimp and banished him to my sump until he will be needed, but I haven't seen my sand sifter and it's been 2 weeks so I do a quick search for him in my sand bed nothing, any ideas what happened??
Inventory = chain link eel, 2 snow flakes, a diamond Goby, six line wrasse, green mandarin, 2 benghai cardinals, blue tuxedo sea urchin, Sally lightfoot, blue legged hermits, turbo snails,2 Tongan nassarius snails, porcelain crab newly added, coral banded shrimp, peppermint shrimp, fire shrimp, black tip red fromia and the sand bed is 3"- 1/2 thick. I don't think he would die under the bed because they usually come out to die, he didn't decompose because levels are normal do you think scavengers ate hi. That quick without leaving any evidence??
 
Sally lightfoot or the coral bandit shrimp would be my first guess.

i had a sally and it was aggresive toward the other tankmates. and they work fast
 
I also heard if it's not pristine water conditions for the star, they will slowly start falling apart, leg by leg. Have you done much research to make sure you are hitting what it needs ? Good luck and I do hope things turn around for you.
 
I had several stars in a 125, then we noticed tips missing within the first year. There's one left and it looks great. The others disappeared years ago. We concluded that there was only enough food for one. The strong survive.
 
Chunks missing from sea stars is less likely to be predation and more likely the beginning of the process of dying. Very difficult to keep them adequately fed so they starve and then disintigrate.
 
Ever since I removed my peppermint shrimp the fromia is doing great you can see his wound getting smaller and he's healing
 
You are lucky that you were able to get yours healthy. I lost mine due to a number of issues. Those include a yellow tang that picked at it-maybe because it was already unhealthy-no clue! :)
 
The fromias seem pretty hardy. Mine climbed onto the screen at the top of my overflow. When I found him, he had one whole leg and two half legs left. He's healing up fine and regrowing his legs and he eats great, but he is kinda lopsided and funny looking for now.
 
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