Starfish Indentification Please

[idisc]

Just got a new piece of live rock and found a few of these starfish with red on them.

Any idea what kind of star this is... I am extremely zoomed in on it...

 

[Zainer]

Thanks for posting that on here for me Justin, but here is the full res image, might make it easier for identification.

 

[Zainer]

Apparently it won't let me edit my last post. I put up the wrong link to the photo. Moderator could delete that post or merge please.

 

[jraker]

Looks like an asterina.

 

[Zainer]

We have spotted two of them in our tank and have been able to sump one of them. When we find the other one, we will probably just can it. Seems they are a nuisance no?

 

[hotelbravo]

not really a nuisance. some people dont like them but they are just being cautious. its unlikely it will bother anything.

 

[Zainer]

I was able to find the other one this afternoon and the wife threw it in the garbage after she smooshed it a little bit just to see what it felt like. Should I get a divorce?

 

[Ron Reefman]

In some tanks they reproduce at a rate that becomes a problem. Some have been known to eat corals, but that seems to be fairly uncommon.

Don't divorce your wife over this. But put it on the list of things you'll give to the lawyer some years down the road! Just teasing... this comment comes from a man married 3 times and finally found a really good one! Oh, and I'm her 3rd husband!

 

[EdgeN]

I don't trust them.

 

[lifeoffaith]

I don't trust them.

Wives or asterinas?

I've had lots of asterinas in my tank in the past. If I saw an upswing in numbers I would just remove several. I would remove any with green on them as I had heard that they are more likely to munch on coral. Your's has some cool looking red on it!

 

[shadowmonster]

I don't trust those Asterina stars either. Until somebody can positively identify the bad ones from the good ones I'll continue to treat them all as bad. It's just not worth it IMO. Diversity is cool and all, but there are some things we can do without. This being one of them.

 

[Dkuhlmann]

I've got literally hundreds of them in my DT and sump and so far nothing is damaged by them. They are only cleaning algae off of the rocks and glass. I've been actually thinking of getting a harlequin shrimp to eradicate them, BUT I don't want the hassle of keeping chocolate chip stars in my sump for leg donation. I would have to get at least 8 of them in order to rotate out leg removal. The legs do grow back, but again I think it's more trouble than I'm willing to go through.

Not to mention that my Yellow Candy Hogfish "MIGHT" eat the shrimp.

 

[ThRoewer]

I have a harlequin shrimp and it cleaned the 40B nicely.
I need to move it to the 100 gal next but have 3 good Fromia in there that would needed to be evacuated to the 40B first...

I also got a Protoreaster sea star but can't really bring myself to feed it to the shrimp... I may put it into the sump of my CAD light tank to keep slime algae in the chaeto chamber in check...

 

[2smokes]

I had 2 types of asterina stars.These like in the picture with reddish and grey colors and otthers white and grey.The reddish ones were a pest that sometimes eated healthy zoanthus heads.Not all the time ,just sometimes.At somme point i eradicated them but i let the otther grey white asterinas in peace.Somme would say they go to eat the coral that was allready diyng but ive seened them trying to eat perfectly healthy zoanthus polyps.I would keep an eye on them in case they try to eat zoanthus.

 

[Bugboy2020]

Those look like mine from my tank. So far, they haven't bothered any corals.