[Jasno999]

Unknown- looks like starfish??? Help ID.
Ok. SO My tank was in need of some cleaning today. I decided to do some pruning and re-aranging. I also dug down into soem sections of my sand bed to just get it agitated and ewhat not.
Well I am looking at the tank about an hour later and I see this white thing on the glass. I look closer and notice it is moving and it looks like the center section of a starfish. It looks like a starfish that hads all it's legs broken off and had basically a mouth left and a few small leg sections....
I have no freakign idea what it could be. I used to have a large brittle star in my tank but it dissapeared about 2 months ago and I figured it was dead. It was brown and huge. This thing is white and tiny....
Here are some pictures. Hopefully somebody can ID it.

[charlie]

Looks like an Asterina star to me. You are good to go here. JMHO

[FireEater]

Yepper, Charlie is correct. Notice the missing legs?

They drop them and the leg grows into a new star. Soon you will have hundreds of them.

[Jasno999]

Originally Posted by FireEater

Yepper, Charlie is correct. Notice the missing legs?

They drop them and the leg grows into a new star. Soon you will have hundreds of them.

Not sayign that can nto happen but it is hard to beleive that it will happen in my tank. I have never seen one before and I have not added anything new to my tank for abotu 3 months. So I am guessign I have a bunch now but not enough that I have ever seen any so it can't be that bad.

The only thing I did was stir up the sand bed so I think that is what forced thsi guy out.....

The one thing is I have noticed some strange stuff goign on in the tank. I don't do water changes like I should but things were always great. Recently one of my turbos and my urchin started actign funny. Then the urchin died.... Coral is find, damsel is fine snails seem to be better but just strange.

[Samper]

How did you acclimate the urchin?

[TankU]

I have @ 6 of these in my tank. Are they good? I really don't want hundreds of them. A couple of mine has missing legs as well. How large will they get?
Thanks for any feed back.

[FireEater]

They are great at cleaning and yes you will get plenty of them soon enough. They are harmless.

They range in size from a quarter inch to about a dime.

[Toni217]

I was told to get rid of them, because they will over take your tank

[FireEater]

How does a little starfish that is a great cleaner take over ones tank. I have had them for years and they have never gotten to where they can take over the tank.

What harm were you told they would do? I have never heard of them harming anything.

[ret25yo]

some can eat aipstatia !!!! and we all know what a wonderful benefit those are !!!!!! lol

[TankU]

Good to know they are ok and shouldn't take the tank over. I guess I first seen one that hung toward the back of the tank over a year ago. I now have 6 that really works all over the tank now. I can't see that they have done any damage to anything, so I will keep them for now. Thanks for the info.
Tony

[Jasno999]

Originally Posted by Samper

How did you acclimate the urchin?

The urchin died. Had nothign to do with acclimation as the urchin had been in the tank for about a year and was doing great until abotu 2 weeks ago.

[kronos5]

ttt

[Jasno999]

Now that is some type of revival of an old post.

[weez1959]

They won't take over your tank even if you do have a few hundred of them Mostly they hide all day and roam the tank at night looking for nummies!
I've got plenty of them and I do see them out during the day occasionally.

[jed42]

My Urchin just died to, I had it for about a year as well. I was told they live for about 5 years. but don't know how old it was when I bought it.
I have a lot of those star fish to, they are cool! I put live rock and sand in when I started my tank and I noticed them with in a week. "I was geeked so say the least".

jed