ID - No pictures O_o
 

Last night as I was watching my tank, I saw a LONG ( about 2 cm :P) arm poke out of a whole in my blue sponge. It was sort of a creamy brown color with black rings on it. My interest was peeked and I watched it for another hour before exhaustion wore on me, but i saw 2 more arms poke out.

I believe it may be a star of sorts. Is there a way to get it to come out of the sponge? And if I do, what do I do with this creature?

How thick were the arms? A lot of us have small brittle stars scattered amongst our rocks. In some cases they seem to have originated from a single source in Calgary, and appear to be a common hitchhiker elsewhere. Regardless, it has been decided that ours are filter-feeders, and assuming this is what you have, and noting the arm-waving behaviour exhibited by yours, I would expect that this is what you have as well. Shouldn't be a problem.

arms are very thin.

I figured it was a brittle star, but I never trust myself on ID's.

I really do have to get a camera that has macro capabilities *smack*

My main concern is that its *home* is actually inside of my sponge... he wont dig himself a bigger hole will he?

I have hundreds of those Brittlestars. The arms are brownish with cream coloured rings, or the other way around. Whenever I feed the tanks I am greeted with waving arms everywhere. They live in rocks, zoanthid colonies, and in my Fluval filter foams. I know I got mine on purpose from Tony. :eek: :lol:

I would very much doubt your brittlestar will enlarge its hole. Generally they seem happy just to have a hole at all.

Mine live in my green star polyps, in the eggcrate holding my skimmer up, under my return pump, in my live rock, etc.

Good stuff =) Thanks =)

Nemain I have similar stuff, looks alot like white antenea that come out of the rock and just wave around Sometimes it's two or three of them. I'm not convinced mine is a brittle star, maybe some type of worm etc... who knows though.

Doug