starfish baby????

[Charliegirl2u]

I bought a starfish for sifting my substrate and today I see this, did it have a baby???? I was thinking it is but two of it's "arms" are longer than the other 4. is this a baby starfish??

 

[cmador]

Not a baby, it's an Asterina.

 

[t11t5]

Its a asterina starfish. Some people say they are good some dont. I left them in my tank and had no problems with them.

 

[Charliegirl2u]

do they stay this small and where did it come from?

 

[Burgman]

Hi,
They stay that small & they usually hitch hike in on a coral or live rock.

Dave

 

[Charliegirl2u]

I just googled this thing and it is not a good thing, recommended that if you see them to get them if you can, they will eat acro's, glad i posted this, thank you all for your help

 

[Charliegirl2u]

is there a dip for corals???? I know that if you put live rock in a very high salinity bath for one minute it will rid it of unwanted pests, but I am afraid to do this with new frags or pieces of corals that I buy .... I don't want to bring home worms or aiptasia or anything unwanted and wanted to know if there is a dip of some sort that I can use for everything before introducing it into my tank????

 

[Burgman]

Hi,

They don't eat Acro's, I have had them in my tank for years and never observed them munching on Acro's in my tank. To answer your question there is no dip you can use that will kill all the bad things on frags & live rock. Most dips are targeted at specific type of organisms.

Dave

 

[Kreeger1]

The tropic marin dip is a good place to start though.

 

[DiscoReefRover]

yeah ill have to agree with burgman... i have them with no prob ..yet i only see them in my refugium not immy display but im sure there in there....

Sean

 

[RyanMKintz]

I have them as well my LFS told me that they are bad only due to their ugly looks, but I guess that was his opinion

 

[Charliegirl2u]

I found this artical when I googled these starfish and it is scaring me enough that I removed two of them just today ... http://www.garf.org/STAR/starfish.html

 

[Charliegirl2u]

and I thought they were as cute as the dickens

 

[raynist]

lots of reading here:

http://reefcentral.com/forums/searc...=9565936&sortby=lastpost&sortorder=descending

 

[Old Crusty]

I had them but never saw them on my acros. never bothered anything that I had, but I picked them out with hemostats anyways, you can control the population easily by picking them out when you see them.

 

[useskaforevil]

guys, there are different kinds of these starfish, some are harmless. the kind i have don't seem to do much, maybe eat coralline (i bought them to do this) and reproduce

 

[idareefer]

they will multiply like crazy, better left out of your system, I had some eat some of my acro's, only a couple of them, left the other acro's alone, wouldn't risk it.

 

[CleveYank]

As Dave, Terry, and Sean have noted,
I also have not noted a problem with these ever.