Looking for info on this cool starfish...

[ScubaSteve]

Originally Posted by Myka

The trouble with that approach is that the LFS will bring more in because they sold. Maybe not this particular starfish as it may have been a mis-ID even from the supplier. When an LFS sells an animal quickly, they want to bring more of that animal in. I would rather see these animals die at the LFS because then the LFS wouldn't be so quick to want to order it again.

It takes a person trying to achieve success, though many more are sure to die in the process. People want to try to figure an animal out, but in the end they really don't provide anything special compared to the next Joe Reefer.

Right, I do agree with you and I'm not about to start a debate on the ethics of this hobby, the collectors and the LFS that sells the stuff. Before everyone gets on their ethics high horse, it was a miss ID sent to the LFS. They ordered Linkia, they were sent "linkia" and they didn't know what to call it other than linkia, so they were selling it as a linkia. I was feeling him out to see if he actually new what he had; he thought it was linkia, I knew otherwise. In a situation like this I am more inclined to purchase it from the LFS and give it a fighting chance. Me buying or not buying a miss ID isn't going to stop another miss ID; if I go to Indo and show the collectors the differences between the species, then maybe I could do something there. About 95% of my livestock is aquacultured because I don't believe in collecting from the reefs; I too would rather let them lose money on wild caught livestock until they start changing to aquacultured livestock (then again, I'm also quite uneasy with watching them die when I know I can raise it successfully).

Unlike other average Joe Reefers, I AM willing to go to lengths to try and achieve success with it. Not saying that I am more special than anyone else who may have tried keeping this species but then again most Joe reefers haven't spent the past few nights going through scientific journals looking for info and having his marine biologist friend who specializes in enchinoderms come over to help suss out a plan. Being a university researcher I have access to a few more resources than your average reefer, and I'm trying to use them and do my best to learn more about a creature that hasn't even been studied much. But in my opinion, no book will ever come close to personal experience...

What I was looking for around here was to see if anyone else had stumbled on this species before and could provide a little more information than my reference books, not the usual forum attack and lecture about ethics and the LFS. Success with any species is incremental, I was hoping someone might have had an experience that I could build on.

Sorry to come off blunt, rude or angry... I'm not, nor is this particularly directed at you. I'm just getting frustrated with the usual negative responses on CanReef and other online forums (which I myself have given as well) when I was looking for positive support and a "let's try to figure this out together". We've all heard this lecture a number of times before; I want to move past that and try to actually learn something positive so that we can at least try to find ways of improving the success of certain species.

Originally Posted by naesco

Myka is right. By purchasing an impossible to keep species all reefers do is to encourage LFS to bring in more that end up dieing in our tanks.

The starfish pictured is likely a neoferdia glyptodisca.
It lives at 33 meters so, if you have a cool very dim reef set up you might meet this requirement.
Nothing is known about it feeding requirements.

Naesco, thanks for the help. The pictures I posted were not mine but pics online of what was ID'd as N. offreti. I think that ID is off personally. Mine is a toughy. It is somewhere between N. offreti and N. glyptodisca and I'm leaning more towards the latter.

From my discussions with the marine biologist, we think the temperature range of my tank is OK for this species and I agree with you that it prefers darker regions. This is obvious as it scoots into shaded areas when the main light comes on. I have a set up that gives large, open dark areas and I've moved it to these areas and it is certainly more active. My friend thinks that this one will likely be able to adapt to the varied lighting conditions given enough time. He's had a few deepwater species that he's acclimated to halides in only a few weeks.

I'm still trying a number of foods and seeing which get a feeding response. Funny enough, it seems to show some response to AcanPlus... I swear this stuff is becoming a miracle food. Seems to like the funk that grows on my glass and the jury is out on pods. I was able to catch some REALLY tiny pods last night with a syringe, flash froze them and then thawed them (easier to handle when dead... too fast alive). There was a feeding response but not like I was expecting... but that may have been due to my F***ing cleaner shrimp loosing their poo and poking at everything because there was food in the tank. So far, I think the best response comes from bacterial mulm.

So the only trick now is to see if I can keep it eating and healthy.

Originally Posted by MMAX

What did you pay for it if you don't mind me asking?

Uhhh... I think it was $20... basically they sold it for the same what they would sell a linkia.