Starfish legs being chewed on?

[Paulm7373]

I have noticed the ends of the legs from my starfish look like they have been chewed on and eaten away. I have a clownfish and a chromi, but I had up to 3 crabs in there from last count. Would they likely be the culprit? Will my starfish be ok and have the ends of its legs grow back to normal with time?

 

[Bruen]

What type of crabs?

 

[herp_mommy]

Let's hope it's just an injury. Several starfish in the wild are suffering from "starfish wasting syndrome" where basically their legs rot off and crawl away, and they don't grow back. I'm no marine biologist, but something similar happened to my last two stars. They were gone within a week.

 

[Paulm7373]

What type of crabs?

I know one of them is probably a gorilla crab because of its hairiness and white tips at the ends of its legs. Not sure what the other two are but they the brown in colour also with white tips. Don't see them too often.

 

[Paulm7373]

Let's hope it's just an injury. Several starfish in the wild are suffering from "starfish wasting syndrome" where basically their legs rot off and crawl away, and they don't grow back. I'm no marine biologist, but something similar happened to my last two stars. They were gone within a week.

The whole legs aren't rotting off,
It's only the ends of the legs. It's been like that for a few weeks now. Was your crab also excreting an orange or red liquid substance from under its body in the centre? Mine does that and I'm wondering if it's just excreting waste.

 

[mr_X]

It's simply dying. Nothing is eating it. They disintegrate starting at the legs and proceeds inward to the body. my guess would be starvation since it's on the glass. no one really knows what fromia stars eat. Either that or poor collection practices. Some say if they are exposed to oxygen, they are doomed...it just takes time for it to kill them.

 

[Paulm7373]

It doesn't always stay on the glass. It also crawls all over the rocks where I'm hoping there's something on there in the form of food. Is that a common event in all starfish or only the fromia type?

 

[mr_X]

Well, they can all die like this, but the hardest to keep alive in closed systems are the fromia starfish. Serpent/brittle stars being the easiest to keep.
Why I mentioned the glass is, if there was enough food on the rock, it probably wouldn't leave it.

 

[navaljonf]

I agree that it's dying. My old starfish did the same thing until it didn't have legs.