Sps eating starfish

[MikeAtJax]

Niko,

I have some in my tank too. They have never caused a problem for me. Mine look like your picture. BTW never put much salt in GARF, anyway IMO. I remember seeing something about it in wetwebmedia.com, a far better source than any I have seen. You might want to check it out. I do believe that they recommended removal. I think it was more along Ben's line, they take advantage of other problems. I don't have time to research it right now.

If you feel certain that you have a type of asterinids that are eating your corals, then maybe there is a fish that eats them.

Wish I could have been more helpful.

[nikonosis]

Well like Ben said, he thinks I am trying to use this as a scapegoat, but the problem with that is this.

Several weeks ago this problem started and we were trying to find out what the problem was, Linn found that thing on GARF, which I don't buy anything they say, so I brushed it off at the time and did nothing about the stars. Well this coral was perfectly healthy where the star was found on it only a few hours before I found the star, I pulled it off and it had eaten a ton of the tissue which was not missing only a few hours before lights out.

Last night I read all over the place about them and the same with today, there are lots of people that have had them and had zero problems and there are lots of people that have had them eat sps and softies.

From what I have read there are 3 different species and they all look almost identical but 1 species eats algae, 1 eats softies, and 1 eats sps. It looks like 95% of the time you end up with the ones that only eat algae since the other 2 are very rare.

[nikonosis]

This is what Dr. Ron said about them,

Identification to species is impossible as they are poorly scientifically described, and it appears that perhaps several species look, for all intents and purposes, identical. Genetic testing seems to be the only way to discriminate them, and even that is a bit iffy.

There are 3 types (possibly species or possibly just varieties of one species) that show up in aquaria. The most common seems to eat biofilms or algae off of hard substrates, probably about 95% of the ones found do that. The next most common seems to eat soft corals, probably about 3% of the ones seen in aquaria do that. And about 2% seem to eat stony corals.

You can tell what they are eating by seeing what they aggregate on. If they cluster around corals and then if you can see obvious tissue damage to the corals, it is probably best to remove them. And manual removal is the only way that works. If they don't cluster around corals, etc., they are likely harmless, and will be another member of the "eaters of algae" group that you have in your tank.

[nikonosis]

Could it possibly be like this discussion we had before? Could these starfish be like regular fish? I have never seen a foxface eat zoanthids before, I actually own a foxface that doesn't eat any coral, does that mean they don't exist. I certainly don't believe so because one of the members in this club (teach) has a foxface that eats zoa's. So what does that mean if these starfish possibly act in the same manner?

[mecold]

Nic,

Good luck trying to pull them all out. I see so many tiny ones in my tank now that I really didn't notice a week ago. I couldn't imagine having to try to find every last one of those little guys. It may be time for a harlequin shrimp.

[nikonosis]

thats about what i feel like doing, the only thing stopping me is i wanted some linkia stars at some point.

[Discdogge]

Maybe we'll be extremly lucky and only have one of the bad ones....yeah....right.

(we seriously have the worst luck ever, with everything.)

[Robwsup]

I'm pretty sure you got a few from me. I seem to remember Lynn thinking they were great. We have thousands here, and have never noticed any even on SPS, much less eating them.

Any idea why you've had them for a couple years, but they only started attacking SPS a few weeks ago?

[PelagicMagic]

did you check for red bugs?

[nikonosis]

Originally Posted by Robwsup

I'm pretty sure you got a few from me. I seem to remember Lynn thinking they were great. We have thousands here, and have never noticed any even on SPS, much less eating them.

Any idea why you've had them for a couple years, but they only started attacking SPS a few weeks ago?

because we didn't have any sps... We just started the sps's a little over a month ago and there wasn't alot of those stars in the tank. Something had been eating their legs.

[nikonosis]

Originally Posted by PelagicMagic

did you check for red bugs?

ya there isn't anything on the sps. I fragged the hell out of that one that was eating and most of the pieces that I saved are doing well now. There is one that was pretty tore up that I tried to save but I don't think its going to make it.

[PelagicMagic]

it sounds like water chemistry or flow issues that led to RTN

[nikonosis]

Originally Posted by PelagicMagic

it sounds like water chemistry or flow issues that led to RTN

where did you get that from? you just can't believe that the starfish did that...

[PelagicMagic]

got it from experience and lessons learned the hard way. The articles I have read on the asian star fish, 5 legged stars etc always wiped out all sps in the tank within days. Some corals are not as hardy as others and when parameters get out of wack they are the first to suffer

[nikonosis]

i don't know of any parameters that are out of wack...