Is this a starfish or something else??

[Alicia&Chris]

So we just started a salt water tank and a very new to this. We bought a used 42 gal hex tank with live rock. Had the rock set up for a few days added a pair of clown and today we bought a live plant called a gree star polyp. While looking at out tank I found what looks like a baby starfish. Now where we bought the plant had red starfish in the tank. But this is small greenish body and covered in white on top. These are the best pics we could get.

 

[mfdrookie516]

asterina star i believe... here's a good place to i.d. hitchhikers Xtalreef

 

[Zer0]

Yeah that is an asterina, and they are not babies of the red sea star you saw at the LFS.. that's a different species. Btw, the green star polyps aren't plants, they are coral.

However, coral does have algae inside of their bodies and that algae feeds through photosynthesis.. so i guess you could think of them as saltwater plants lol. But they are called coral, just FYI.

 

[melosu58]

I agree with asternia stars. I have many in my tank.

 

[Mitchell0605]

Some Asternia's eat coral so if it's always on a coral I would remove it from your tank permanently.

 

[Jaybird]

if it's an asterina it's the first one I have seen with all of it's full arms attached.

Make sure you put the green star polyps on a rock that you can easily remove from the tank. They can grow very quickly and can take over large parts of the tank.

 

[thincat]

So, Let's hope you are not rushing into this.
1) Did you cycle your tank?
2) What are your readings, SG(salinity), ammonia (NH3), NitrIte(NO2) and NitrAte(NO3) and Temp...
I'm thinking you did. Was the tank setup and you just moved it to your home?