Brittle stars in power head?

[mafrank101]

I've had a 40 gal set up with only two clown fish for about 4 years, and recently added a couple of mushroom corals from a petstore & another clownfish I got from someone else's tank.

A month or two ago I noticed what looked like a small brittle star - red & white striped, about an inch end to end. It stayed mostly in the same spot for a couple of days, then vanished. About a week ago, I took a look at one of my power heads, and noticed what looked like an arm from the brittle star sticking out of one of the cracks. Since then, I've noticed arms sticking out in three places - several inches apart. This would mean that either there are three in there, or it got chunked up. They haven't rotted away, so I'm assuming they are still alive.

Has anyone ever had brittle stars (or anything else) do something like this? I don't have any pictures, but it is a strange sight.

Thanks

Michael

 

[surf_buddy]

I've had a 40 gal set up with only two clown fish for about 4 years, and recently added a couple of mushroom corals from a petstore & another clownfish I got from someone else's tank.

A month or two ago I noticed what looked like a small brittle star - red & white striped, about an inch end to end. It stayed mostly in the same spot for a couple of days, then vanished. About a week ago, I took a look at one of my power heads, and noticed what looked like an arm from the brittle star sticking out of one of the cracks. Since then, I've noticed arms sticking out in three places - several inches apart. This would mean that either there are three in there, or it got chunked up. They haven't rotted away, so I'm assuming they are still alive.

Has anyone ever had brittle stars (or anything else) do something like this? I don't have any pictures, but it is a strange sight.

Thanks

Michael

Mine hide out on the top part of my rios all the time. No danger right there. It's a kind of a funny spot though.

 

[keithinspokane]

sounds pretty normal to me too,i have smaller bristleworms get in between the magnet cleaner and the glass.my only question has always been how do they get up to the magnet....apparently they can climb the glass.

 

[Reefreak]

I have brittle stars in every crevasse I can find. If a few get pureed hundreds more will take their place!

 

[mafrank101]

Thanks - good to hear I'm not unique!

The funny thing is yesterday I looked throughout the tank for any hint that the darned things were alive, without much success, and when I turned on the light this morning, there were two sitting on the glass in plain site, in addition to the three that were still in the power head! Upon further review, I found that in one of my chunks of dead coral (red tubular coral) there were arms coming out of around 5 different places! So far that puts the number up around 10! I still don't know how they got in my tank, but I'm not complaining. I'm not a big tank cleaner so they have lots of food, so I imagine in a year I'll be asking how to get rid of the damn things!

I was still unsuccessful in getting a picture, but I found what looks like them on the web at this location.

http://images.search.yahoo.com/imag... 3&type=JPG&oid=c7b9c6fddd4b3d18&no=17&tt=146

It's the big picture of the three armed brittle star. All of mine seem to have three arms as well, with a couple little nubs. Since I've seen three of them fully, my guess is they are only supposed to have three arms.

Michael