sea star murderer?

twagshot

New member
Just introduced an orange sand sifting sea star into my tank. In two nights, it has massacred a fire shrimp and two snails. I was "lucky" enough to see the sea star take down a snail and suck it out. Ridiculous. Is this normal or did I get an unfortunate serial killer? I think I am going to have to return it!!! This sucks.
 
Do you have a picture? I have never heard of an "orange" sand sifting sea star. Is it orange and knobby? Sounds like a predatory starfish and you got sold a bill of goods. Buy Caflo's book on Invertebrates and research them so you don't get taken again.

Lee
 
it just buried itself again. It seems to come out at night to do it's killin'

I'll try to get a photo when the blue LED's come on.
 
It's hard to say what's typical for them because there are so many different species sold as "sand sifting stars." While they all look superficially similar, their behavior and feeding varies quite a bit. This is certainly within the norm for some of the species that may be collected, but would be unusual for many others.
 
You probably got lucky and got one of the snail killer species. I never had one that killed both shrimp and snails, but I've had ones that would kill either one (I never kept an orange one). The interesting thing about my snail killer was that certain snails were instantly goners if he wrapped them up, while he couldn't seem to kill other species. He'd keep them wrapped up for a whole day, then when he released them, they'd crawl away. Others would be turned to goo in a matter of 5 or 10 minutes, or less.

Cheers,



Don
 
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