something destoryed my brittle star

BretCreager

New member
we just recieved an order from live aquaria for a cleaner package. in that we got one brittle sea star.

background. I have a 70 gallon system running for about 8 months, i am a little low on ALK but everything else is great. i have in the DT 1 6 line wrasse, 2 bangii cardnals, 1 cleaner shrimp, 2 emerald crabs, 1 sally light foot, 2 turbo snails, 3 small to med red legged hermits, and a bunch of Cerith and Nassarius.

with the order i also added 3 small peppermint shrimp and 3 more emerald crabs

so the order didnt show up until very late in the day even tho the tracking says they dropped it off at 9:30 am it didnt get here until about 5 pm. the water temp in the bag was 73* and the salinity off by maybe .002

So i added water maybe 2 - 4 cups at a time to the bagged water (which totalled about 1 to 2 gallons total) to warm the water up to 79* took about 15 minutes or so.

the star was doing well. we added everything to the tank and the star moved to hide under some rocks.

the next morning (today) he had lost about half his arms almost up to his body. we moved him to sump (which has a couple snails and 2 very small emralds). when i got home just a little bit ago he is almost no more. still there but torn to shreds. :sad1:

as far as my research has taken me I see no fight in livestock in the tank and i was mostly worried that the star would be the problem after he grew a little bit.

can anyone give me some insight as to what might have caused this? also his bits and parts still seem to have some movement to them if they are disturbed does this mean he is fighting for life or do they just kinda do that for a while, nothing moves unless something disturbs it, he doesnt run just has some small curling or twisting going on.

:sad1::sad1::worried2:
 
we just recieved an order from live aquaria for a cleaner package. in that we got one brittle sea star.

background. I have a 70 gallon system running for about 8 months, i am a little low on ALK but everything else is great. i have in the DT 1 6 line wrasse, 2 bangii cardnals, 1 cleaner shrimp, 2 emerald crabs, 1 sally light foot, 2 turbo snails, 3 small to med red legged hermits, and a bunch of Cerith and Nassarius.

with the order i also added 3 small peppermint shrimp and 3 more emerald crabs

so the order didnt show up until very late in the day even tho the tracking says they dropped it off at 9:30 am it didnt get here until about 5 pm. the water temp in the bag was 73* and the salinity off by maybe .002

So i added water maybe 2 - 4 cups at a time to the bagged water (which totalled about 1 to 2 gallons total) to warm the water up to 79* took about 15 minutes or so.

the star was doing well. we added everything to the tank and the star moved to hide under some rocks.

the next morning (today) he had lost about half his arms almost up to his body. we moved him to sump (which has a couple snails and 2 very small emralds). when i got home just a little bit ago he is almost no more. still there but torn to shreds. :sad1:

as far as my research has taken me I see no fight in livestock in the tank and i was mostly worried that the star would be the problem after he grew a little bit.

can anyone give me some insight as to what might have caused this? also his bits and parts still seem to have some movement to them if they are disturbed does this mean he is fighting for life or do they just kinda do that for a while, nothing moves unless something disturbs it, he doesnt run just has some small curling or twisting going on.

:sad1::sad1::worried2:

That was a quick acclimation...

It should be 2 drops, per second, for a straight 2-3 hours... not 4 cups in 15 minutes...

I'm blaming the sally light foot and emeralds attacking it... and the acclimation made it a weak, sick, easy target for them...
 
If I had to guess, I would say that it either got caught in a powerhead or your sally lightfoot got a hold of it. It sounds like it's in bad shape, but stars have been know to recover from pretty bad damage. How does its oral disk look? Damage to their oral disk tends to be the most devastating to them. A picture would help a lot. I would leave it in the sump until it recovers and maybe even permanently.
 
the disk is split wide open at this point. the broken off legs are still moving like zombies, is there any point in keeping them in the tank? i agree it was pretty fast but I was very worried about the temp being so low and the shipping being so late to arrive. maybe I panicked a bit. but i have also read the advice on this site saying that slow acclimation is not a good way to go. unfortunatly there are sometime too many points of view and this time I picked the wrong one. at what point do I say he cant make it? if the crabs got to him, which in the bucket they seemed to ignore it completly even try to get away from it, should i avoid trying for a star again or would you think that this was just a bad set of events that led to this outcome? I will get a pic but it isnt pretty
 

Attachments

  • 20131010_173327.jpg
    20131010_173327.jpg
    57.9 KB · Views: 5
It looks pretty bad..I would just watch it closely and be ready to remove it right away if it dies.

IMO a drip acclimation is usually best, but not mandatory. There are plenty of starfish that get drug off the ocean floor, packed into big cargo containers, sailed across the ocean in complete darkness for up to 3 weeks, unloaded into new containers and shipped to stores, thrown into holding tanks at the LFS, sit there for who knows how long until they get picked up by someone starting a new tank, driven home out of the water, and finally put into an uncycled tank where they proceed to thrive.

As far as getting another one..I would wait and see what this one does first. If it doesn't make it, I don't see why you shouldn't try another one. It was probably just a stroke of bad luck. That said, minus a few exceptions, I really don't trust anything with claws. And from my experience, sally light foots will kill pretty much anything they can get their claws on.
 
What's wrong with my brittle?

What's wrong with my brittle?

My brittle is acting sluggish staying elevated and keeping himself in open any ideas what's wrong please help
 
The legs can only regrow IF they have a decent portion of the disk attached. Otherwise they'll rot.

MV3MOSS, go and start a new thread.
 
Back
Top