Star Fish

[Trevor Robertson]

Okay well about two weeks ago I went out and purchased a super cool looking star fish. It had some cool blue tiped legs and some dark spots on it. Well it did very well in my tank for the last two weeks although I have not seen it for the last day or two but I though nothing of it as it would often hang out behind a rock or something that I could not see.

Well on Saturday we had some people over to watch the big our door game so my wife wanted me to cut down the green culurpa that is over taking one side of my tank so as I was cutting it back I noticed the tip of my star fish in the middle of it all so I though cool found ya (thought that I was playing hide and seek with it there for a minute) well untill I tried to move him out of the way so that I could continue to cut away and I noticed that it was the not the star that I though but only one leg of it. So I though oh shit dead star well that blows, well I for some reason did not remove the leg from the tank but left it on the sand bed and about two hours later (after the Mega stars game) I found this one leg is now on my glass! Well odd. So my question is two fold...

will this star be able to grow back to how it was and I may have two now
or
will it slowly die and if so will my big mean bristel stars eat it?

Thanks, PS I have not seen the rest of the star still so who knows.

[AJ_77]

Maybe this recent thread will help:

http://www.canreef.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=6629

(Geez, Trevor, do you read the board at all?? :wink:)

[Trevor Robertson]

I guess I should have done a search first, man I will tell you when you have a new baby that keeps you up all night you don't get the same time to read the boards.

Oh well Thanks.

[AJ_77]

That baby STILL keeping you up? Your wife having trouble training that little one?

:wink:

[Delphinus]

I never pulled any of the arms out of my tank "just in case" but I have not seen any of the pieces for about 4 or 5 days now so realistically it is not very likely that any are still with me. They never slimed up or anything like that, they just kinda shrunk and then disappeared.

I couldn't find a whole lot of information regarding the starfish I had. It was sold as a "burgundy linckia" but in some of the articles I read about the linckias, it seems that it could also have been a Tamaria stria (see "part 2" of this page: http://www.wetwebmedia.com/seastars.htm ). Not much seems to be known about that particular species, although there does seem to varying accounts of reasonable success with it (I spoke to a number of people who have one, also Rob Toonen makes mention of having one himself in his article on Linckia sp.: http://advancedaquarist.com/issues/may2002/toonen.htm ).

In his article Rob Toonen makes mention of taking exceptional care when acclimating starfish. I drip-acclimated mine as I do all my new arrivals but I certainly didn't do it over a period of 24 hours (as Terry Seigel did with his, see http://advancedaquarist.com/issues/may2002/Editorial.htm ).

I hope that yours does not continue its trend of self-severing as mine did. By your description it sounds like you have a different species from mine but one thing that really shocked me as I was trying to research these starfish is that we don't seem to know a whole lot about specific requirements and diet in particular about non-carnivorous or non-meat-eating-scavenging-whatever starfish. A chocolate chip star, for example, can be specifically fed, but not really a linckia. You have to hope it can find enough of whatever slime it's looking for in your tank, or that it can adapt to whatever slimes you do have in abundance -- hardly quantifiable approaches though -- so there seems to me (maybe I'm off base in my observation here, I don't know) that there is an element of "spin the wheel and hope you get lucky." Which is too bad because they're fabulous looking creatures.

[Trevor Robertson]

Yes I would have to agree with you on that note as I did not know alot about feeding it but thought that I would give it a try and it seemed to be doing so well that I was going to get a 2nd one but now I think I will stick to things that will be swiming.

Thanks for the input.