I have a 35 gal saltwater setup for the kids - we populate it with things we catch on the beach/tide pools on Cape Cod, MA - minnows, hermit crabs, shrimp, and
starfish. After a quick google search, I think the star fish are sugar star fish?
This winter has been tough, as we have no way to get indigenous snails, mussels for the starfish to eat, so we've been going to the local grocery store and getting mussels. Of course, these mussels are not as fresh as the ones we get on the Cape, and many of them die before they can get eaten by the starfish. I always remove the deceased immediately, but the tank always gets cloudy pretty quickly when we introduce a batch of mussels. Usually a 15-20% water change and a couple of days clears it up.
Starting this morning, one of the starfish started dropping all of it's
legs. Now, 3 legs have dropped. Not sure what's going on? The weird thing is that the starfish and the dropped legs are not looking like they're "melting" as I've read elsewhere. The color is pretty much the same, and when I scoped up one of the legs, it was hard and spiny (normal). Seems like the dropped legs and the main starfish with 2 legs are all still alive and wiggling/moving around the tank - weird. They've climbed all over the tank and eachother. It's really creepin my wife out - kids think it's cool though.
Now one of the other starfish is getting ready to shed its legs too. All the starfish have a red dot on the middle top of the center (can't remember what it's for). This one has grown another red dot and one of the legs is getting ready to take it with him. I'm going to do another water change tonight.
I've read that starfish may shed its legs when the conditions are poor - to increase its chances of survival for the main body. I've also read that some starfish can regenerate from a single leg. Not sure what's going on here. Everything has been in the tank for 6 months. I did have a spell a couple of months ago where we lost most of our hermit crabs - not sure why, but I suspect the starfish were getting really hungry. The ones that were left were crawling all over the tank and seemed happy (not hiding in their shells like when water conditions weren't right).
We checked the PH, Amonia, Nitrites - all are normal. Nitrates are a little high, but have been for probably a month with no problems. The fish, shrimp and hermit crabs all appear happy.
Does anyone have any thoughts or advice on what's going on or how to fix it (if it needs fixing)?
