I'm not real experienced with starfish, so I was looking for a little confirmation on what I'm seeing. I picked this one up for my 65 gallon after the February meeting, and it seemed to be doing fine. The last two days it looks like someone has been nibbling on it. White stringy fleshy patches. I moved it down into my sump in case that was the issue. Is this something that can heal over time or is it on its way out? Or is this normal, like a molting or something similar? Sorry just felt the need to add the tailspot photobombing my pictures. As for stocking. There are two black clowns, a tailspot, and a solon fairy wrasse. There is also a coral banded shrimp I guess. He molts all the time so I assume he is still alive(sidebar what do you do with the molted flesh? Let it dissolve on its own or remove it?). Nothing has really shown any interest in the starfish that I have seen, but if I were to guess it would be the wrasse. Not having a QT tank has made his addition difficult. Until yesterday I have never seen him in the water column reliably. I got him about a week before the February meeting, so roughly 5 weeks without seeing him eat......Honestly thought he would have died weeks ago. As for the water parameters they have been constant. No nitrate, nitrite, ammonia. SG is holding in a constant range.
Starfish can be difficult to keep as they need a mature tank to fulfill their nutritional needs. That could be trauma but that looks like what I've seen when starfish are on their way out. They just start to slowly dissolve for lack of a better description. The only reason to not think that, is it usually starts on a leg not the body/disk
I guess they would eat that? I think the prey on microfauna, thus need an established tank with lots of critters. I have that same species and we may have bought from the same shipment from The Fish Tank. I feed heavily and have never seen mine eat food on the bottom.
I had a serpent star that would take food off of the feeding tongs, but different species different needs. Gotta stay away from these impulse buys.
Yep, serpent and brittle stars have much different feeding methods. I've got a brittle start I got 4 years ago, getting close to a foot across now.