Starfish lost a leg (or is it arm??)

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limitup

Aquarium Advice Regular
Joined
Jun 30, 2004
Messages
57
Location
Dallas TX
We got a neat orange/red starfish last week ... I don't even remember the name of it as I was out of town and just got back.

Anyway, a few hours ago I noticed he was hanging from a rock ledge, like he was just going to drop off it to the rocks below. Then I went to lunch.

I just returned and what do you know, now I have a 4 legged starfish sitting on the rocks below, with his other leg still attached to the ledge he was hanging from!

Say what?! There's no way any of my fish did this - they aren't big enough to bite through his leg like that. But it's also pretty hard to believe that his leg just snapped in half and he fell.

Is this normal? Will he live? Will it grow back?

And do starfish have legs or arms? :)
 
This is relativly normal, and he should grow back his arm. Dont take out his arm though, it may grow four others and become a new starfish too! This happens with some starfish species and may happen with yours.
 
It would actually be a "ray" as opposed to arm or leg!

As mentioned, Linckia are one of the types of starfish that can regenerate from a single ray. Many though cannot unless part of the central disk is still intact. I would identify your starfish if possible and go from there.
 
I wasn't here when they put in the new stuff, and I'm waiting for my LFS to fax over an invoice with the names of all the fish, etc. I know, I know ... but bear with me as I'm new and learning as fast as I can.

Here's a pic. The lone ray finally fell off the rock it was clinging to and landed right next to the rest of it's body. They were both moving a little, but not so much right now ...

Can anyone identify this starfish?

starfish.jpg
 
Yeah that's probably it, unless there is another type that looks identical to that...
 
I don't know, neither is doing very well right now. The starfish with its remaining 4 rays looks in bad shape all of a sudden ... almost like he is disintegrating for lack of a better word. It looks like little bits and pieces of him are just falling off his body??? The lone ray is just sitting there for awhile now, although I think it might still be moving every now and then. It's so weird. 12 hours after he lost his ray he looked otherwise normal, now he looks like this. Is he just freaking out from the trauma of losing his ray? At this rate there won't be much left of him in another day or so!

starfish2.jpg
 
Had him exactly 1 week today. Drip acclimated him for almost 10 hours and he was fine for the first 6 days ... crawling all over the tank. Until yesterday when he was hanging from a ledge and one of his rays snapped in half ...
 
It's like something out of a bad horror movie ... he's just melting away like someone poured toxic waste on him or something. If you think the last pic was bad you should see him now. Poor guy ...
 
I've got almost the same problem with a star that I recently inherited. Pieces of the guy are falling off, one little section at a time. I drip acclimated for 2 hours and other than the tips of his arms/legs/rays, he looks fine, but hes lost the ends of two in just t he last 8 hours.

It's a hard process to witness
 
What's weird is that it all seemed to happen after he lost that one ray. Or could it have been a bigger problem that just took a week to fully manifest itself? He did look great for the past week, crawling all over the tank. Oh well, I'm going to try another one soon ...
 
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