Fromia starfish help please

[poorfishies]

Hi all we have recently added an orange fromia to our 29 gallon Biocube. Water parameters are:

Salinity - 1.024
Nitrates and Nitrites both 0
PH 8.1

Everything is thriving in this tank. Corals are splitting and growing.

Acclimated the starfish slow drip over couple of hours. Have only had it for about 5 days and now it has these weird growths? on its back. Is it disintegrating? Here is a photo from my cam phone. Noty the best quality but it shows the growth-

Any help greatly appreciated.

[YLChik]

i think it's dying....

the pic isn't the clearest so I amm not sure, but stars tend to disintegrate when dying/dead.

I have killed 3 myself... I have no idea as to why...

my best guess is change in SG ( the salt level in your tank) via water changes or top off.

or it was exposed to air at some point from collection to your tank.

sorry

[aquawolf]

Does it happen to be upside down on the rocks in that picture.

Some of them will actually push their insides out like that in order to feed or get rid of waste. It can also be a sign of stress.

As Amy stated, when a starfish starts to die they actually disintegrate and you will have no doubt that it is happening. They will usually begin to tear apart near the body mass where 2 of the legs meet, and it will look like it split and melted. Unfortunately, once it reaches that point it is really too late to do anything for it.

Leave it be for now and see if it doesn't retract the "icky" stuff on its own after a little while.

Best of luck with it.