Link about coral eating starfish

fugucuts · 10-19-2004, 03:15 AM

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

Interesting link about some sps eating starfish. I've seen them before when I've ordered corals and thought they were cute. Not so cute anymore.

Jeremiah · 10-19-2004, 08:50 AM

I have tons of those in my tank... Don't have any sps though...

otolith · 10-19-2004, 09:50 AM

I'm not conviced about them necessarily being "bad."

WildPraire · 10-19-2004, 12:08 PM

I have these too. I've done a lot of reading about them and from what I can tell there may be different 'types' of these small stars. I've never had any problem with mine and I do have some SPS. In fact I've never seen these stars on any of my corals. I tank watch a lot, even at night.These guys hang out on the rock, and glass but mine have never hurt anything. I leave them in the tank.

Sue

ReefSitter · 10-19-2004, 01:27 PM

I have a couple sps too

, Also had at least a hundred of these stars a few years ago and never saw any problems. But after reading about them, I purchased a harlequin shrimp and in a few months they were gone. Problem is when the stars are gone the shrimp will starve to death.

otolith · 10-19-2004, 02:46 PM

Well, we could always pass the shrimp around...The only problem is that I don't want him taking a bite out of my sand-sifting star.

The only time I've seen them on an sps of mine is when the coral was stressed and had some area of tissue injury/loss--and I doubt it was caused by the star.

Jeremiah · 10-19-2004, 03:32 PM

From what I read over at garf, there are several types of these tiny stars and only some of them are coral eaters. They said that the ones that ate corals wiped out noticable amounts of coral in one days time. I would think that if you had ones that caused damage you would be well aware of it...
Just my $.02