Yet another unidentified creature

[albert]

Very happy New Year to everyone!

Found this little guy moving around rather quickly about an inch in a minute . Could it be a baby starfish?

http://charon.assert.ee/aquarium/pics/1010-0157.jpg http://charon.assert.ee/aquarium/pics/1010-0153.jpg http://charon.assert.ee/aquarium/pics/1010-0156.jpg http://charon.assert.ee/aquarium/pics/1010-0158.jpg

[H3R0]

i dont see anything?

[Zack]

Hmmm maybe a snail of some sort, no hard shell?

[albert]

no hard shell?
Hard to say, probably no shell. First time I saw it a week ago on sand and then it was much smaller. Its total size on the pictures is about 1/3"

[Zack]

try putting it on the galss see if it has a mouth. If so, maybe one of your snails had babys. You may see these guys mostly at night maybe 2 hours after tasnk lights go out, use a flashlight and see lots of cool critters.

[Telco Guy]

Actually it looks like a Bad coral eating starfish. You can read more about it >>here (http://www.garf.org/STAR/starfish.html)<< at Garf.org.

[Zack]

Good ID nick. Yea looks to match the pic ok!!

[albert]

Good work, Nick! It's definitely one of those bad guys, probably Asterina anomala. I'll try to catch and isolate it somehow to help keep my eye on it.

Thanks a lot!

[Rock Anemone]

That starfish is a Asterinid star. There are 3 types of these. One is very rare and will feast on your corals. If you happen to find them on your corals in the future, these are them

The next one, which is rare as well, will eat soft corals such as leathers, xenia, mushrooms and zooanthids. If you happen to find these on those corals, you have these stars.

However, the third and last, which is most likely the one you have, eats algae and surface films, you don't have to worry about them.

As you can see in the picture, it seems to be mostly on the algae that is on the base of the coral. However, keep an eye on it and see if it does any damage to the coral.

Rock Anemone

[Zack]

I put all those kinds of stars in my fuge, is that ok?

[Charles Poole]

I an with John here. I have thousands of these in my tanks, and had them for years. never seen one eat a coral yet. Very unlikely in my experience for us to come across a coralivorous mini star....

[Rock Anemone]

They would be great additions to a refugium, they will help keep a lot of the microalgae down. Usually the ones with 7 arms are bad however I have spotted a few of these in my tank but have never seen them do any harm. I have hundreds of these of all sizes in my tank and they really do help keep a lot of the algae off the glass and rocks.

Rock Anemone :D

[Charles Poole]

I was over exagerating by saying thousands... :)

In a my 125 gallon tank, You can easily count 100 of them in roughly the time it takes to count to 100.

I have not yet run across these 7 arm stars, but appreciate to possible warning. Let's hope noone has to learn those are bad the hard way...

[albert]

Thank you guys for very useful information!