Walking Starfish, Pic & video

[Alexraptor]

Was talking past my tanks and suddenly spotted the biggest Asterina starfish I have ever seen in my system.
Whats more, I managed to get some nice up-close footage of it in motion, being able to clearly see all the little tubefeet move.
Course, would have been better if my skimmer wasn't spitting out microbubbles after just having been restarted.

Wish I could have gotten my camera, but would have taken forever to run and get it and take the batteries out of the charget etc, so I just grabbed my smartphone.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EYvsMEyqOuw

 

[bonzaicube]

The footage was pretty amazing, where do these starfish come from? I would love to have one in my tank.

 

[Reef Bass]

Asterinas are small seastars (they are not fish, so starfish is really a misnomer) that tend to hitchhike a ride into a tank undetected on frags. They can overpopulate into plague like proportions, so generally they are not considered desirable tank inhabitants. The presence of a few doesn't cause harm, and may induce some "aw, so cute", but a few can rapidly become too many.

 

[d2mini]

nice! i love watching them move. Urchins too.

Here's a time lapse I did showing how much my stars move around over the course of several hours!

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/pLMaFa_6uL0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

 

[snorvich]

They can overpopulate into plague like proportions, so generally they are not considered desirable tank inhabitants. The presence of a few doesn't cause harm, and may induce some "aw, so cute", but a few can rapidly become too many.

When they become too many Harlequin Shrimp can solve that problem.

 

[Alexraptor]

Personally I have never had a problem with Asterina's, but then they also have A LOT of competition from brittlestars, pods and bristleworms.

nice! i love watching them move. Urchins too.

Here's a time lapse I did showing how much my stars move around over the course of several hours!

Very cool!
I really need to get a camera with time-lapse functionality myself.