Serpent Starfish discussion

[bif24701]

I have a 180 gallon display and two Serpent starfish, one bright red the other purple (maybe) with darker strips.

Who keeps them and how long have you had them.

Mine don't come out much and sometimes I get scared they are gone but they always pop up again later.

I'm interested the know more about these things as there isn't much information on the web about them concerning our hobby.

Thanks for joining my discussion.



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[Maritimer]

I've got a couple of the grey-banded ones. I don't see them often, but they sometimes put in an appearance at feeding time. They're surprisingly alert, active and aggressive!

I've seen one of the big green ones reach out for floating krill, wrap an arm around a piece and reel it in by sort of rolling the shrimp down a coil of arm. Kinda cool, and very quick!

Given to understand that the central disk is a sort of single-but-diffuse crystalline latticework _eye_!

~Bruce

 

[bif24701]

I've got a couple of the grey-banded ones. I don't see them often, but they sometimes put in an appearance at feeding time. They're surprisingly alert, active and aggressive!

I've seen one of the big green ones reach out for floating krill, wrap an arm around a piece and reel it in by sort of rolling the shrimp down a coil of arm. Kinda cool, and very quick!

Given to understand that the central disk is a sort of single-but-diffuse crystalline latticework _eye_!

~Bruce

My Red does exactly that and yea he is pretty fast.

Here are two of the few photos I've taken.

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[Ron Reefman]

I have a purple one like that. It has been with me for over 6 years now and even survived a month in storage bucket after my 180g leaked and it took a month to get a new CADlight 125g set up. Like the ones listed above, mine stay under the rock 98% of the time and comes out partially or completely at feeding times (I think it depends on how hungry it is?).

 

[bif24701]

I have a purple one like that. It has been with me for over 6 years now and even survived a month in storage bucket after my 180g leaked and it took a month to get a new CADlight 125g set up. Like the ones listed above, mine stay under the rock 98% of the time and comes out partially or completely at feeding times (I think it depends on how hungry it is?).

My wife thinks they are creepy. I think it's cool to have things like this in my system. They are hell of a good CUC. I have some good sized rocks in my display and had to removed them once and there was no detritus stirred up, they even are able to live up inside the rock it's self.


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[Ron Reefman]

bif, I do a lot of snorkeling in the Middle Keys, a lot of it right off the beach. We see serpent and brittle stars all the time. They can be very pretty colors and patterns. I lost a couple when my 180g tank broke and I had to keep livestock in smaller tanks and buckets. But my old purple one survived. I think they are very cool and so does my wife. We just wish they would come out from under the rocks more often.

 

[bif24701]

I think having as many diverse and unique creatures as possible is what makes a cooler true reef tank.


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[Jayofd03]

We're thinking of adding one to our 55 gallon reef tank. My questions are if they'll be a good addition to a tank that size or is it too small for them? How big do they get? We have a variety of small zoanthids, hammers and frogspawns. For fish, there's a Lawnmower Blenny, a Christmas Wrasse, Yellow Watchman Goby and his Tiger Pistol Shrimp, two Black Ocelaris Clowns and a Cleaner Shrimp. Would the Serpent Star try to make any of them, especially the Goby and Pistol Shrimp, dinner?

 

[Ron Reefman]

The only serpent star that is a hunter is the green brittle star, or so most reefers claim. I've never had one. none of the ones I've had ever bothered anything else in the tank (corals, fish, shrimp, snails, crabs, cucumbers...).

They can get up to about 8" in diameter and your tank is probably as small as I would consider. They need to be fed more with a smaller tank as there won't be as much 'stuff' in the sand or rocks for it. And fish usually get most of the food. When I feed the fish and coral, if the star puts a couple of legs out from under a rock, I'll make it a point to get a good size piece of shrimp down to it, usually on a long wooden BBQ skewer. The star will wrap a leg or two around the food and I can pull the skewer out, that way the fish don't steal it from the slower moving star.