What is this starfish?
- Thread starter Reefer40b
- Start date
shadowmonster
New member
Asterina starfish. :thumbdown
sam.basye
New member
There are good ones and bad ones, with generally more good than bad. They will reproduce, but regulate themselves.
The get a bad rap because they can reproduce rather quickly and they is a certain strain that will eat corals. Unless you see it on a coral, then I assume it's a good one.
I wouldn't worry about it if it were me.
Ron Reefman
Active member
I had an 'outbreak' of them in my old 180g. At the height of the population I would have 10 to 15 of them on my front glass. I saw some on the rocks and corals, but never saw any damage.
So one day I decided that 15 was too many on the glass and I removed them all. The next day there were about 10-12 and I collected all of them. The next day there were only about 5 and I collected them. After that I never had more than 2 or 3 on the glass for the next year. And I never saw any damage to anything else in the tank.
So one day I decided that 15 was too many on the glass and I removed them all. The next day there were about 10-12 and I collected all of them. The next day there were only about 5 and I collected them. After that I never had more than 2 or 3 on the glass for the next year. And I never saw any damage to anything else in the tank.
SeaCucumberFan
New member
If you find more and think there is too much get a harlequin shrimp
Not a good idea as they will starve as soon as they run out of starfish
SeaCucumberFan
New member
Once they are gone you can return the harlequin but they usualy reproduce quickly so the harlequin will never run out
Ron Reefman
Active member
And what if I have other sea stars in the tank that I want to keep?
If you are going to make recommendations, at least make sure you reference the side effects as well.:headwally:
SeaCucumberFan
New member
Oops
Calappidae
Harlequin Shrimp
Harlequin shrimp eat 15 asterinas per day - based on several studies and personal experiences. If it were that easy people would just farm asterinas to feed harlequins, asterina populations are decimated by harlequins.
On the topic of asterinas, its a case by case basis. I personally own a harlequin in all my major setups so I don't have issues, but I've had a 30 gallon where I decided to get a population going intentionally as "back up" during winter starfish shortages (btw, the entire population didn't last 2 weeks when that happened).
Within 3 months there was a counted 63 asterina starfish on my glass on average based on a 7 day tally.
Another study I payed attention to was at a local library where I got the stars, and it seemed they refilled themselves faster than I could take them once in awhile.
If you didn't have a massive outbreak at this scale, that's just your luck, its individual experience but numbers get bigger over time, the rate is what the big difference is and how early you start taking action. I imagine the food they find in the tank are a huge factor like bristleworm populations as well.
So in the good/bad asterina starfish debate, they're technically harmless but because of 1) ocassional population outbreaks and 2) the rare chance its a coral/coraline eating species, they're safe to assume just bad. Basically its a gamble, your faith in your luck keeping them.
But yea, if the outbreak did happen, a harlequin is by no means something threating to tankmates or the like, they can easily be thrown in and taken out if you don't want to feed them. If you're worried about your other starfish, sump them meanwhile. Interestingly other starfish seem to prey on asterinas, even stars we have had no record of eating anything but film such as linckia have been recorded eating asterinas consistently.
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Ready, Fire, Aim.
RGordon013
New member
Is this also an Asterina or something different? Today was the first time I've seen it and it appears to only have three arms so far.
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