starfish killer?

[Michael Brumit]

I woke up to find my starfish torn to pieces. The current tank inhabitants are a flame fin tang, a pair of B&W clowns and a skunk line shrimp. They have all been living together fine for a while. I have caught a few "fireworms" last night i assume they are fireworms bright red with white legs. The ones i caught were about 2-3 inches. I am wondering if anybody else has had this problem or if i should look for a new suspect. What is the most effective way to get ride of these. I picked up a trap at the critter i am gonna give a try. I am open to any suggestions.

 

[BeachedMermaid]

If possible, see if you can't witness the fireworms in their favorite rock, try to remove this rock in the daylight and put it in a dark bucket with no water. The worms will crawl out of the rock looking for a wet safe haven. You can usually remove the rock leaving the worms behind without significant damage to the live matrix, this is really only feasible if you don't have coral attached to this rock.

 

[sandalscout]

Doesn't seem like a fireworm would be that aggressive, but mine are all pretty small still.

 

[rcmike]

Are you sure it didn't just die? I have had starfish die and they pretty much just fall apart sometimes.

 

[NeveSSL]

I was about to say the same as Mike. Fireworms/bristleworms are scavengers, not necessarily hunters (with a few select species that are rarely seen in the hobby being the exception).

When starfish die, they deteriorate QUICKLY. Most likely he died for some other reason than a predator and just fell apart.

Brandon

 

[Michael Brumit]

The starfish was still alive trying to move around with just nubs as legs. I moved him to another side of the tank and then later he had holes all in his body. I could see if it just died that the worms would feed on it quickly but it was still moving around. I don't see anything else in the tank that would do this. Maybe there is something i am missing but i hate to replace him just to have another go through the same thing.

 

[rcmike]

They will deteriorate while still alive. Pretty gross but it does happen.

 

[Michael Brumit]

Well that might be the case then. I did not know they did that. I guess you learn something new everyday. Thanks

 

[james3370]

mine i had for about 2 years thru several tank moves just stopped moving from one spot for several days. when i reached in to move it to a different spot to see if was still alive, it just fell apart

was a sad day....

 

[supertech99]

I had one, it was adopted and it was huge, it was going fine then i accidently did a 15gal water change and one of the 5gal jugs was ro water not salt mixed water. it dropped my salinity from 1.025 to 1.022-1.023, not huge but seemed to be enough that it totally killed the starfish. Just fell apart into a billion pieces. I did some research and found out that different species and even different specimines have different sensitivities in reference to salinity. He came from a very salinity stable system so the shock was too much for him.

 

[dborowsk]

There are plenty of different types of starfish or sea stars or echinoderms. Your sadness could be any of multiple possibilities. Though, it probably just died. Dead sea creatures get munched on by just about everything. If it was a healthy critter, they can regenerate lost limbs, such that torn apart and healthy, you'd have asexually doubled your starfish count. Sorry for your lost.