Harlequin Shrimp

[manderson0805]

I'm thinking about getting 1 or 2 of these to decimate the exploding population of tiny stars that seem to be taking my tank over slowly. I've heard they will go after any size starfish, but that is the only thing they eat. I don't want to get something to let them slowly starve to death in my tank, so, would anyone here that can keep them fed be interested in them once they've done their job? Also, if anyone has kept these before, if you can comment on their behavior, and feeding.

[JnS]

you can always feed them CC stars

[sls]

id probably take them for my nano in progress.

[dirk griffin]

The peppermints I had sure seemed to like them

[clownfishcrazy]

I read somewhere that if you feed them a big star, such as a blue starfish, that they only have to eat once a month. And as you probly know starfish can regenerate there arms, so keep the starfish on its back while the shrimp arm eating it and place food in the mouth of the starfish to keep it alive so that is doesn't fowl you tank.

[manderson0805]

Dirk, are you talking about the peppermints eating stars, or peppermints eating harlequins?

Jerry, CC Stars?

[JnS]

Dirk- were they fed anything else? lol never heard of a peppermint eating those little stars.

Mike-chocolate chip stars..cheap and effective for feeding

[manderson0805]

I'm too squirmish to cut legs off things....hehe....might have to consider it if the shrimp are cool....Jerry, PM me a price on these if you can get them

[manderson0805]

well, I've been looking around, and I've seen only 1 person talk about harlequins taking care of the small little mini stars. Has anyone else heard of this before?

[capman]

In reference to keeping a seastar on its back....a seastar will not stay on its back. It will turn itself over, most likely in a matter of minutes....and I'm not sure that most seastars would eat if on their backs.

Regarding harlequin shrimp...they are very very cool animals, and normally live in pairs. I'd love to be able to keep a pair of these but I have never been able to convince myself that I'd be willing to buy seastars continuously to feed them.

[manderson0805]

do you think a couple hundred small (1/2" or so) stars would be eaten by them? If so, I'd probably go for it, and buy a CC star from jerry every couple of weeks to keep them happy

[ReefSitter]

I had stars everywhere a few years ago. They look kind of cool, but I noticed some of my sps had a few small "bare" areas. After reading numerous posts about the "possibility" of these small stars damaging sps, I purchased a harlequin shrimp.

After about a month, the stars were all gone. I had to hand pick them out of my sump. Unfortunately soon after, the harlequin was gone too. I believe the harlequin only feed on tiny stars.

I never was convinced these stars damage sps, but if you read enough posts, you can convince yourself of anything.



Mark

[dirk griffin]

I had mentioned a couple of weeks ago when the peppermints came in, they were taking about 20 seconds (piranaha like) before the stars were discovered that I had put in the tank and ate them up pretty good. After seeing this I did feed them a little more. The little stars usually missing arms, breed like crazy and have few natural enemies. I have been battling them for a few years now.

[capman]

My experience with the tiny asexually-reproducing (hence the missing arms) seastars (not tiny brittle stars, but sea stars) is that they mostly eat biofilms (algae and bacteria and such) off of surfaces (you can see places where they have eaten bare patches in the algal film on the glass sometimes), but sometimes they take a liking to certain zooanthids They are just relentless once they start...it is like the zooanthid is sending out a signal to all the tiny seastars in the tank saying "come eat me"! (and I suspect the damaged zooanthid is in fact releasing chemicals that are attracting them). I would pick the stars off and the next day there would be more...day after day....and eventually the colony got to be too far gone and did not recover. This is how I lost the nice pink centered zooanthid I used to have (in this case it seems that the initial damage that initiated the seastar attack was some bad Aiptasia stings). I have also had them do this with Tubipora.

Other than these problems with certain zooanthids and with Tubipora, I think they are cool to have in abundance in a tank. Nonetheless, we have gotten in the habit of removing any we find on the glass (easy to get them there)...we just slide them up above the water line where they stick and dry out (this is much easier than actually trying to pick them up in your fingers). This has reduced their numbers a lot (though I wonder whether we might end up with just selecting for a strain that stays hidden better during the day!).

It is encouraging to hear that the harlequin shrimp eat these tiny stars.

Of course, if peppermint shrimp eat the stars they would be a better control option since they will eat other things as well.

[EdgeKrusher]

Something Fishy has two harlequin shrimp as of sunday. It was very tempting to say the least.