Sea Star Hitchhiker

[RoRo1387]

been workin on a nano tank the past 6 months and recently noticed a couple of baby banded brittle sea stars...first i noticed three legs are much longer than the others and wanted to kno if this was a normal growth process and second i kno there very good scavengers but should i try to find a home for them and get them out of my tank cuz i doubt they will be able to survive in my nano

 

[finsurgeon]

They'll be fine, and you can expect a couple hundred more to join them, as well as asterinas in the next few months. They will take care of themselves as long as your reef stays healthy.

 

[Elysia]

Unless you got your rock from someone tearing apart a reef tank, your brittles are unlikely to be juveniles of one of the larger brittle/serpent stars, but one of the species of "mini" brittle stars that are full grown when the body center is only a centimeter or so in diameter. The "micro" stars are usually smaller and white/cream/faint grey. I don't know that it is the normal growth process for the legs of the brittle to grow at an uneven rate, but it is not unusual for brittles to be missing legs or for their legs to errode when conditions get bad (like, say, the live rock you are in is dry shipped across the globe.) As long as there is something to clean up in your nano, these little brittles should be fine.