Sps eating starfish

[Discdogge]

We've been having some mysterious sps problems, with bleaching/receding from the base up and patches.

We found the culprit tonight. Asternia starfish munching away on an acro!!

http://www.garf.org/STAR/starfish.html

Hope no one else has the evil evil adorable little munchers, if you do, find the tweezers asap!


Linn

[Discdogge]

I'll post a pic of the damage he did tomorrow.

[Bennihanna]

Are you sure he was munching them why they were alive? If the coral is already on the way out they will attack the coral.

[nikonosis]

Originally Posted by Bennihanna

Are you sure he was munching them why they were alive? If the coral is already on the way out they will attack the coral.

it was munching on them while they were alive, definately, they did it to more than 1 coral btw, about 4 of em.

[PelagicMagic]

you know what is worth a 1000 words?

[PelagicMagic]

a picture

[PelagicMagic]

If you found that starfish your wife posted in the garf link you are in for some serious headaches. I had an article on them if one of my reef mags and for every one you find there are many, many more. I hope it was just a mistaken ID.

[nikonosis]

of the starfish or the coral? I threw the starfish in the trash. I am 1000% sure it was eating it because every single night these corals would lose some tissue and it only happened at night. Well yesterday there was several very distinct patches of tissue missing on this one coral, the lights went out and 2 hours later I looked in the tank and saw the **** star fish on the bottom of plug where the sps has spread over the plug, a fairly big patch. Well where the starfish was there was perfectly looking healthy tissue before the lights went out and after I had pulled him off there was a ton missing. I will take the sps out of the tank and take a picture of the damage so you guys can see.

They look just like this and are about a half inch wide.

[nikonosis]

Originally Posted by PelagicMagic

If you found that starfish your wife posted in the garf link you are in for some serious headaches. I had an article on them if one of my reef mags and for every one you find there are many, many more. I hope it was just a mistaken ID.

no mistaken ID. I know there are more in the tank and I know they bread in the tank. One of the local fish store owners gave them to use about 2 years ago and we had them in our nano. At the time we had no idea what they were...

[PelagicMagic]

look for another one and try to take a pic of it. If they are that species you will have many of them as they reproduce very fast. You need to back track your purchases/sources of your livestock to find out where you got these from.

[nikonosis]

Originally Posted by PelagicMagic

look for another one and try to take a pic of it. If they are that species you will have many of them as they reproduce very fast. You need to back track your purchases/sources of your livestock to find out where you got these from.

I know exactly where they came from...

[Discdogge]

[nikonosis]

thats is 3-4 days worth of work by the little turd.

[PelagicMagic]

can you get me some macro shots of the base area damage so I can look for AEFW eggs?
I think I see the eggs but cant tell for sure with the distance of the coral

[LadyReefNeck]

Check your zoas too! I have those in my tank and they love to crawl over my zoas. I've been plucking them out with tweezers for weeks! I believe I got them in some live sand I got from someone.