Another Asternia star thread

[TimH07]

its been discussed before here and i hate to be redundant but recently i picked up a frogspawn and on it was a little asternia star. now i have plenty of them in the tank but this one i thought odd because it was mostly black/green rather than white with some off colors.

today i noticed it on the frogspawns soft part of the stalk, and a visible dent/path of which the star had moved across it, unless this guy is digging an irrigation ditch on the frogspawn, im guessing its eating the corals stalk

here is the culprit.

[Ninong]

As discussed in the previous thread, it is the opinion of Dr. Ron Shimek that 95% of these are harmless scavengers. That means 5% are not. If you have one that you think is harmful, I suggest removing it. No one can tell you what you have from a photo. There are probably dozens of different species of these things that have not yet been described.

[TimH07]

i agree. i ment to point out that as you stated in your last thread, this one came as a hitchhiker on the specific coral. perhaps it is like a nudibranch that is specialized feeder (speculating only) but also that almost every asternia ive seen is dominantly white and this is dark, perhaps that could be a characteristic of the coral eating type.... again speculating, but this one was removed and there was damage on the coral.