ID Baby Starfish?

[nsamouroux]

I have no idea where this little bugger came from... The lights had been out on our main reef tank when I glanced over and noticed something cruising around in the sand that wasn't a snail or hermit crab. I grabbed it and snapped a few photos to help identify it and banished it to the refugium pending a solid match with something reef safe

The only starfish we have in this reef tank is a blue linkia and a 5" sand sifting starfish, which has stripes and not mottled spots like this little guy has. We haven't purchased any rock in some months, so this little guy had to have been hiding for quite some time.

Any ideas?

 

[matts125]

just a very common type of hitchiking predatory star fish, there is a huge debate over the fact that they can eat and harm your corals. i say they are pretty well safe in my experience. however they can get to be a plague after they breed so much you have litterally thousands of them in your tank...

p.s. if you found one there are more where that came from..

 

[nsamouroux]

Hrmph. That's no fun! This is the first time I've seen an unexpected starfish in one of our salt tanks, but we've got at least 180lbs of rock piled up in our 100-gallon reef and they could be anywhere since we purchased all of the rock from various sources. The little bugger is currently climbing the side panels of our refugium where he can't do much damage while I research him a bit.

Thanks for the quick response!

Nathan

 

[matts125]

Hrmph. That's no fun! This is the first time I've seen an unexpected starfish in one of our salt tanks, but we've got at least 180lbs of rock piled up in our 100-gallon reef and they could be anywhere since we purchased all of the rock from various sources. The little bugger is currently climbing the side panels of our refugium where he can't do much damage while I research him a bit.

Thanks for the quick response!

Nathan

dont worry about them. if they get to be in the thousands you can add a harlequin shrimp. it will eat them and keep the population under controll..

Matt

 

[matts125]

they are called Asterina sea stars.
check out this link....
http://www.reefkeeping.com/issues/2004-06/ac/feature/index.php

 

[grumpy]

thanks for that info! we use to have them in our last tank and would "pick" them out when we did water changes. My kids had a small jar with them in it they would call "star fish seeds". Haven't seen any in the new tank yet.

 

[nsamouroux]

Indeed! Excellent info, thank you. I was looking for a species name with a picture to confirm since I didn't find any matches on Melev's Reef site, but you're surely correct on it being an Asterina. I'll leave him in the refugium for the time being, since the most damage he can do there is munching an astrea snail or some slow worms in the sand.

I hope there aren't too many of the little suckers in our main tank, since adding a harlequin shrimp would probably have unpleasant consequences on our blue linckia star unless we moved him to our smaller 55-gallon setup.

Nathan

 

[charlesr1958]

Be carefull with that one, while it is most likely an Asterina species, there are a GREAT many Asterina species, most of which have little to nothing known about their diets but given that most all other starfish species are predators in one form or another (most commonly other sessile inverts) I would not risk keeping that particular one that you have as it appears to me, to be of the predatory type. I think I have some examples within my hitch hiker pages.

A Hitch Hikers Guide to the Reefs

Chuck

 

[nsamouroux]

I've read on a few postings (Wetwebmedia, reef central, et all) that the 7-legged species are generally "safe" while the 6-legged ones are not. Based on GARF's research on their site, it's tough to consider any of these guys, regardless of leg count or other identifiers, to be reef safe.

Not really sure yet where this little guy fits in, but he's not coming out of the refugium until I have a good idea of his behavior and eating habits. I don't want to jump the gun and commit starfish-icide, or add a harlequin and be forced to move our Linckia to the second (less established) tank. I've got a few large green polyps in our refugium that will serve as the "bait" to see if this little critter and his pals (most likely more of them, afterall) will cause trouble. If I find any more of them, I'll certainly be adding a harlequin for a time while our blue linckia cruises in our refugium, and then move the harlequin to our refugium and keep him supplemented with generic starfish chunks while the linckia returns to the main tank where he's been doing so well.

 

[Herefishyfishy]

I have had all colors, sizes and types in my SPS and softy tanks. I collect them from other reefers since my harlequin shrimp consume them. Have never seen one eat anything other than coraline and green algae. Coraline algae appears to be their primary and preferred diet.

 

[nsamouroux]

Well, I've used the first sighted advance scout of the mini-starfish swarm to justify the purchase of a harlequin shrimp As far as I can tell it's a male, so I'll keep an eye out to find him a life partner. I'm keeping him in our above-tank refugium, which is a 10-gallon acrylic setup (basically a mini salt aquarium setup complete with rock, 6" sand bed, green polyps, macro algae, etc) that gravity drains to our main reef in order to keep our Mandarin plumped out with 'pods. As I find the little starfish in the reef system, I'll plunk them into the refugium to be fed upon, or start a chocolate chip starfish "leg rotation" from our FOWLR tank if I run out of the little guys

Now to find him a female! You can see the little asterina starfish in his clutches already, he snapped the little guy up as soon as he hit the sand bed!

 

[slim_jim989]

man those shrimp also look badass lol.

 

[Herefishyfishy]

Do not underestimate how much food they require. Get him a chocolate star soon.

 

[nsamouroux]

Do not underestimate how much food they require. Get him a chocolate star soon.

We've already got 3 chocolate chip stars in our FOWLR tank (all about 4" diameter in size) in case we run out of Asterina stars. The in-laws also go crabbing regularly out on the sound and routinely pull in at least a couple of larger local species starfish; I'm looking into the legality of keeping and freezing these catches for the purpose feeding a pair of Harlequins. I saw a post from a while back where I believe you were consulting with another board member about the same possibility (using locally collected stars that the person was successfully feding to his / her own harlequins); did you ever get that figured out? The Fish and Wildlife website mentions that there is a 10 per day limit (per person) on collecting starfish or non-crab / clam invertebrates from shore or in tide pools year-round, as long as they're not collected from a state park (which are illegal to harvest from).

 

[Herefishyfishy]

Ya, just need a licence and good to go.
I am still looking for a sourse

 

[nsamouroux]

A shellfish license is required for shore-bound collection of "misc invertebrates", but do you know if a crab harvesting license / permit would work for collecting them out on the water? I'm sure that we could fill whatever limit they impose (10 starfish per person with shore collecting, but don't know limit for collection from boat) very easily just in the course of pulling in the crab pots on normal outings. Normally the in-laws just toss out whatever starfish or other misc critters end up in the pots since they're unwanted.

I'll try calling Fish and Game later today and see what they say. With the size and number of the stars that are routinely tossed back into the sound we could probably feed a pair of harlequins for a year with minimal effort if we pop them into one of our chest freezers in the garage

 

[Herefishyfishy]

I agree. One decent sun star could feed a herd of Harlys for a year and be kinder on the tropical reefs while saving some carbon footprint

 

[nsamouroux]

Would only one of the larger stars (sun star, pillow star, etc) really last that long if frozen while "fresh"? I don't want to go through the hassle to set up a coldwater tank to keep these things alive and let them regenerate the "harvested" legs. It would be perfect if I could collect a dozen or so of these stars and pop them into Ziplock freezer bags to store in one of two chest freezers we have in our garage. Putting them into the ziplock and tossing them into a cooler full of ice on the boat should keep them fresh and negate the need for live transport to the house.

I don't really like the idea of buying imported tropical species (sand sifters, linckia, chocolate chip, etc) for feeder purposes, as you mentioned, due to the mortality rates and shipping stresses only to have the one surviving specimen we then purchase out of hundreds collected be chopped up and fed to a hungry shrimp. With the large number of good size starfish species local to Puget Sound, it would seem to be a much simpler process to keep them "in bulk" to insure a constant supply for raising the harlequins.

 

[Herefishyfishy]

You summed it all up perfectly.
I have fed frozen chocolate chip and frozen sand sifter legs to mine and they ate it right up. No reason they would get picky, any tubed foot invert should seem tasty.

 

[nsamouroux]

Excellent! Once I get a solid answer from Washington Fish and Wildlife regarding the necessary license(s) and catch limits to recreationally harvest them from a boat I'll keep a large specimen or two frozen (at least 6 month's supply from one or two larger stars should be plenty). Anything extra that I would not be able to use within 6 months or so (up to whatever collection limit applies) I would then be able to give to other locals from Reef Frontiers to use for their own harlequins.

The people on this site have been extremely helpful when I've had questions, and I've managed to prevent a large number of issues before they became problems using past info in various postings here. Hopefully this will end up being a good way to give something back locally and perhaps to reduce the number of fragile tropical starfish at the LFS' purchased only for feeder purposes, at least on a small local scale.