Red Lincka Star

[mrpope]

Ive had my red lincka star for about 2 weeks and it looks as though its not been eating, and it doesnt move around a lot anymore. I looked up info on the care of them and it said that they were natural scavengers and do fairly well in an established tank and supplemental feeding should be pieces of meats, etc.
It wont accept any supplemental feeding and its always on the glass, so it is not scavenging unless it is doing this at night, but they are supposed to be diurnal, right?My concern is because sometimes it gets patches of discoloration.

Any advice?

I will send a pic if someone will tell me how to post one

[jamal-188]

How did you go about acclimating it? Linkia stars are extremly sensitive to water changes and should be drip acclimated for 4-6 hours or even longer if possible. Signs of improper acclimation may take weeks to surface which almost always leads to the death of the star.

How are your water conditions?

[reefrunner69]

I will send a pic if someone will tell me how to post one

How to add images to your posts

Send us the pic, it takes a linckia close to a year to starve even in a very small tank, it is not recommended they be housed in a tank of less than 100g, they also require their tank to be a mature reef tank full of LR. Linckias eat bacteria and bactrial slime, you will not notice it scavaging or eating leftovers.

I am not trying to mislead you into thinking everything is perfectly fine but something else to note. These types of stars will often sit in one location for days if they find a good food source. The main concerns other than suggested above are loss of color and necrosis.

I would still post the pic to be sure of it's overall health though

Cheers
Steve

[mrpope]

Sorry, I cant include a pic. My cameras resolution is terrible when I try to take pics that a re small in space (I need to get some webspace).
Anyways, I will just tell you. On the top part of the star it looks like the color is darkening, and the "skin" is getting really wrinkly. I dont think its doing too well. Everything else in my tank is thriving, I think jamal-188's guess was right - about the slow acclimation.
The LFS said it was as natural scavenger and would fair well in any established tank, but my tank is definitely not an established REEF tank as reefrunner said it requires. Im suprised at the bad info this LFS gave me though. I wont say the LFS name, but its the largest (?) tropical fish store on the west coast (70,000 gallons of display tanks). I thought that place would at least give good advice, but I guess not.
so if the starfish is doing really bad, and someone in the LA area thinks they can save it - please do.

-Brian

[jamal-188]

Originally Posted by mrpope

Im suprised at the bad info this LFS gave me though

Don't be surprised, most advice give at LFS's is far from being fact. Theses stores usually hire high school age kids that just know bits and pieces of what they hear and very often mislead customer either intentially to make a sale or just out of ignorance.

Originally Posted by mrpope

. someone in the LA area thinks they can save it - please do.

Unfortunataly it is very difficult to save a star fish once they start to deteriorate, espically if it's from something such as acclimation shock I just got a blue Linkia and a maroon linkia today and acclimated them for 7-8 hours which is probably a little overboard but I always figure safe is better than sorry and the extra time is well worth it in the long run. Hope your little guy turns around and it just turns out to be something that he can recover from

[reefrunner69]

My cameras resolution is terrible when I try to take pics that a re small in space (I need to get some webspace).

Resizing your photos

My cam takes pics that are pretty big, there is no need to take smaller resolution pics, just use some graphics software to resize and optimize