Starfish???

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parkwest

Aquarium Advice Newbie
Joined
Jun 13, 2004
Messages
2
Location
California
I've had my reef tank for 3 years. I once added a starfish sometime in the first year but it died almost immediately. Since then no more have been added. I just realized I have a little baby boom happening. So far I've counted 8 starfish in varying degrees of development. All are white and none are over a half inch in diamenter. I haven't added any live rock since the very beginning so I doubt they came from there. Any ideas how these things might have been introduced to the tank? Thanks.
 
Sounds like miniature hawaiian brittle stars, which are ophuroids, if they look like the attached pic.

Most likely rode in on a piece of LR or a frag rock and started reproducing from there. :)
 
parkwest said:
. I haven't added any live rock since the very beginning so I doubt they came from there.

Ah.

How about coral frags?

these kinds of starfish prefer to hang out just under the surface of substrate, on the underside of rocks, so if you got any frags attached to rocks they could have rode in on that little chunk of rock.

Or... if you do not feed the tank very much.. they could have been there from the start and they have just been reproducing slowly (they populate according to the available food)
 
Thanks, I'll look into this farther. I've always had challenges with the element balances, so I don't feed too much. What is so puzzleing is that they all came out the same day. I did just recently add a chiller to the system and brought the temperature down from 83 degrees to 75. It's always ran warm but I just didn't get around to buying the chiller until now.
 
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