So I came home from work only to find my star fish with barely 3 and a half limbs. When I left this morning I noticed one missing and I thought it may have came off while he was roaming through the rocks but this is ridiculous. In my tank that has been cycling with 3 damsels, a few snails and 2 sand sifting star fish (one of which is dismantled); for a little over 4 weeks. What could possibly be going wrong?? The other star has a small part of his arm missing (don’t know how that happened either) but it is not as severe and, I noticed that more then 2 weeks ago. Just look at the poor guy ):
Above posted yesterday
** This morning he looked worse. Almost like he is dissenergrating.
The first thing you will get in response to any question like this: “What are your levels?” What is your temp, salinity, Nitrates? (If possible also what are your Ca, Mg, and Alk)
I also have to say that no higher invertebrate life, such as snails, hermits, start fish or shrimp belong in a tank that has not fully gone through it’s first cycling process. These animals are a lot more sensitive to chemistry issues then fish or corals. Well at least in my opinion. I will say though that if I heard an LFS employee that I knew telling someone to buy a clean up crew before corals I would tell them, to the side, that I thought they were wrong.
[quote=“Gordonious, post:2, topic:1486”]
The first thing you will get in response to any question like this: “What are your levels?” What is your temp, salinity, Nitrates? (If possible also what are your Ca, Mg, and Alk)
I also have to say that no higher invertebrate life, such as snails, hermits, start fish or shrimp belong in a tank that has not fully gone through it’s first cycling process. These animals are a lot more sensitive to chemistry issues then fish or corals. Well at least in my opinion. I will say though that if I heard an LFS employee that I knew telling someone to buy a clean up crew before corals I would tell them, to the side, that I thought they were wrong. [/quote]
+1
especially starfish. a lot of info u read will even reccomend drip acclimation. very slight changes in water parameters will affect a starfish. and they always seem to look like something is eating them. (which is possibility #2) but not necessarily
Although what everyone said is true SSS (sand sifting stars) are extra sensitive, I kept one in my tank when I first got it. After research I realized even my DSB (deep sand bed) couldn’t sustain both the star fish and the bio filtration that I wanted it for and got rid of the star. The star seemed to do fine.
From my research these guys can go up to 2 years w/o a solid food source all the while slowly starving. While I don’t have any empirical data to back it up, that is just experiences I’ve read. Being that your tank is new this guy probably doesn’t have much of a food source from your sand bed. If you want to keep him you can try sticking pieces of food into your sand bed in front of him when you see him.
Some what opposite of what Jon says, the first thing I put into my 75g after setting it up and getting into the diatoms, was a clean up crew of snails and hermits and they all seem to be doing ok. I’ve put these in as ‘throw aways’ though and I’m not too concerned if they make it or not, if not I would certainly chalk it up to the tank not being ready. Being as a snail costs a buck and most corals are at the least $20+, it might not be a bad idea to throw a few snails in to clean up the tank and ‘test’ it at the same time. Now I wouldn’t go ‘testing’ the tank w/ a more expensive sand sifting star thou.
IMO you should ALWAYS drip acclimate invertebrates, I do it for all my livestock, just faster for non invertebrates.
So your star is probably either starving or something nipped his leg off. Either way more nutrition would be a good thing, but me PERSONALLY wouldn’t keep it. I know others (Craig) keep a SSS and it seems to do fine.
What kind of testing kit should I get to test Ca, Mg and Alk…what does that stand for. I assume Ca is calcium. I am reading as much as possible considering I am so new to all of this. What level should the above be at? My salinity is about 25, my nitrate, nitrite and ammonia was all 0ppm when I checked the night before last. Pardon my ignorance to not knowing certain things. I’m learning…
can’t answer what kinda test kit for these elements: calcium, magnesium and alkalinity. google marine test kit, go to local fish store and see what kits they sell.
“my nitrate, nitrite and ammonia was all 0ppm when I checked the night before last.” how long has the tank been running, and are you using test kits with drops or the strips??
how do you measure your salinity? use a decent hydrometer, not the swinging arm kind or spend the 30-50-$ for a reefractometer.
salintity/specific gravity [sg] is usually desired at 1.023-1.026 for reef tanks.
“Pardon my ignorance”
for sure, as long as you ask questions and do some research on your own
I've put these in as 'throw aways' though and I'm not too concerned if they make it or not, if not I would certainly chalk it up to the tank not being ready.
wow, responsible reefing at its best. i guess i never thought as life as throw away.
for sure, as long as you ask questions and do some research on your own
isnt asking questions here him doing research on his own?
ok my :TWOCENTS and i want my change back. As iahn was saying…the sand sifters will slowly disinagrate if not feed enough. so i am guessing with a new somewhat cycled tank your sand bed has no real food, and he is melting away. you can how ever feed them. you have to pysically place him on food such as clams shrimps silverside chuncks. i have mine for over year and he is well feed through sand bed leftovers ect. your tank has not been established enough in my opionion to truly support the sss. but you can feed them by hand for a while till tank is bettter off if you want. i did some research after our phone conversation last nite and this is all i came up with for why your star is going down hill.
I've put these in as 'throw aways' though and I'm not too concerned if they make it or not, if not I would certainly chalk it up to the tank not being ready.
wow, responsible reefing at its best. i guess i never thought as life as throw away.[/quote]
You should see all the bacteria life I cultured and then purposefully had a mass die off of while cycling my tank. Circle of life…The lion king did a good song about it
I have had several serpent stars in my tank over the years, with only one dominating and ultimately surviving. Since they are scavengers, they will need additional sources of food unless your tank is providing a steady stream of willing fish. They are sensitive and will lose limb(s) during introduction to a new environment or changes to existing environments. They will also lose a limb if startled or if it gets caught in the rockwork. I have had all this happen at one time or another in my tanks, but all limbs have grown back over time.
By the way, the only surviving one I have now is a green serpent star, 24 inches tip-to-tip, that I have had for 10 years. He dominated the other smaller starfish, apparently preventing them from getting enough food. And he is a fish eater. I have to feed him chunks of shrimp, scallops, or whatever fish I pick up at the market. Never have any problem with sick fish, they quickly disappear.
Experienced reefers, since lagoler’s tank is cycling, what would be the harm in just leaving the starfish in the tank and seeing if they recover? If they’re goners, wouldn’t that help the cycle? And if they regenerate their missing limbs, all’s good…
Lagoler, I’m fairly new the hobby as well, and it is intimidating with the more you learn the more you realize you don’t know (that I wish I knew before I started). Anyway, hang in there, there’s a lot of good intro material on the web. First priority, though, you do need to get a reef water testing kit, that most any local fish store should have and test your water for all of the attributes mentioned earlier. Getting those levels in check is critical to your success and ultimately your wallet.
The star is slowly starving to death. Sandsifter stars shouldn’t be kept in most home aquariums. We simply can not provide enough food for them to eat. Only the largest of systems with well established sandbeds should be able to sustain a sandsifting star. They don’t do much anyway, just eat all the good stuff in your sandbed, if you want a good sand sifting invert, look into nassarius snails.
It is fine that you didn’t know everything there is to know about the most complex ecosystem on the planet with in the first couple of months of being really interested in it. We are all learning. One thing you can learn from this though is that it is a good idea to read about each animal from multiple source before bringing one home. Too many animals you see in LFS are extremely difficult to keep in captivity and should be left to only true experts and public aquariums.
" I’ve put these in as ‘throw aways’ though and I’m not too concerned if they make it or not, if not I would certainly chalk it up to the tank not being ready."
If they are throwaways due to cost how can you be upset at a restaurant or casino for keeping there fish in a system with over 200ppm Nitrates and just swapping in new ones daily while pulling the dead ones. If you scale things to them considering their income the fish are cheaper then hermits for us. If you told your gf that her favorite type of fish, which she has named and feeds daily, is just a throw away to a casino she might just want to leave. There are also some poor college students that can only afford a couple of hermit crabs and chromis and if you told them the hermits are throwaways they would probably not be too happy with you. Before I could afford corals hermit crabs were some of my favorite animals.(I can prove it with hundreds of photos I took of them when I first set up my marine aquarium.)
If anyone plans on keeping their first reef aquarium you should have test kits and shouldn’t need test animals.
“So your star is probably either starving or something nipped his leg off” You just contradicted what you said. If they can take two years to slowly starve then I’d be surprised if this guy was starving. My guess would first be a water chemistry issue.
As far as acclimation goes I would have to disagree with dripping all animals as I don’t personally drip corals any more. I haven’t dripped any of the last 100+ corals I purchased and didn’t lose a single one due to acclimation problems. However you should temperature acclimate them(float bag) and ask the source(LFS or reefer) what their salinity is. If the salinity is sharply different then I might consider dripping especially for xenia or any corals in the same family.
johnr3 “Experienced reefers, since lagoler’s tank is cycling, what would be the harm in just leaving the starfish in the tank and seeing if they recover? If they’re goners, wouldn’t that help the cycle? And if they regenerate their missing limbs, all’s good…”
When you are cycling a tank you will often hear about putting a single table shrimp into a tank or some extra food to force the tank into a cycle. Typically these star fish are about 6 times large then a shrimp or more. The amount of nutrients released from the death of a star fish of this size would be much higher then a shrimp. When you are adding extra nutrients to assist in the cycle I have always believed it made sense to try to match the amount of nutrients that would be present when the tank was mature and your bio load was as high as it was going to be. If we were to cut an average size sand sifting star up into cubes about the size of frozen cubes which someone may eventually feed it would be enough food to feed a ~300g tank.
The second problem with this is that he does already have some animals in the tank and has already been cycling the tank for a while. This would be starting all the way over again and would be such a large release of nutrients it could build up Nitrates and Phosphates in the LR and substrate which would be slowly released over several months.
Just my two cents and will say I am still learning as well.
" I've put these in as 'throw aways' though and I'm not too concerned if they make it or not, if not I would certainly chalk it up to the tank not being ready."
Ok. Apparently this comment has some people getting grumpy so let me explain it a bit more. I’m certainly not advocating that someone should NOT test their parameters and use animals as their ‘test’ to see if the water is good. I’ve run all ammonia, trite trate, ph tests, and monitor the sg daily (since there is a lot of exposed water and no ATO yet). All of the monitorable parameters are good for what I would consider safe to keep livestock in. Hermits and snails propagate in our systems and aren’t of shortage. Things live and die in our tanks everyday, if you can’t handle that I’m sorry, but that’s life. I will always put in a cheap livestock first into a tank than putting in an expensive one, just makes a LOT more sense to me. Test your tank water first before putting in livestock please, that’s rule #1, but I’m assuming folks already do that! Hopefully that cleared some things up for you folks.
"So your star is probably either starving or something nipped his leg off" You just contradicted what you said. If they can take two years to slowly starve then I'd be surprised if this guy was starving. My guess would first be a water chemistry issue.
Not so much contradicting…what LFS has their SSS in a deep sand bed? I would doubt the star are getting their fill from the 1/2" of sand they roam around in at the LFS. Who says that when they come from the LFS they are fully nourished? I don’t pretend to know any of what I said is 100% true, I’ve never kept a SSS for 2 years or run any experiments on them. Just the information I gathered when I had one and the conclusions I came up with.
As far as acclimation goes I would have to disagree with dripping all animals as I don’t personally drip corals any more. I haven't dripped any of the last 100+ corals I purchased and didn't lose a single one due to acclimation problems. However you should temperature acclimate them(float bag) and ask the source(LFS or reefer) what their salinity is. If the salinity is sharply different then I might consider dripping especially for xenia or any corals in the same family.
I recommended dripping all inverts, and simply stated that I drip all my animals. I just do it faster for non inverts, this saves me from wondering how different the salinity and all of the other parameters are from the LFS or other hobbyists tanks. This also provides an excuse for me to do mini water changes replacing the lost water. Everyone can do it whatever way they deem best. There are many ways to do everything in this hobby, pick the way that is best for you.
[quote=“IanH, post:18, topic:1486”]
There are many ways to do everything in this hobby, pick the way that is best for you.[/quote]
Completely agree with the above statement.
I also used to drip everything. I suppose the biggest change for me was when I started working in the industry and acquiring animals on a larger scale.(I acclimate more animals at home, but also in the systems for the LFS I used to work for and now the maintenance company I work for.)
I agree with you Ian that it is possible the animals have been slowly starving at an LFS, but what I was thinking at that time was that most LFS don’t keep animals for more then a couple of weeks before they are sold. I didn’t consider that some LFS may just put batch after batch of sand sifting stars in the same tank and wholesalers may do the same, so it is near impossible to say for sure how long these animals have already been in captivity before reaching your home. I hadn’t really thought that through all the way.
However I would say that I personally think it much more likely that the animal isn’t happy with the water chemistry in a younger tank.
[quote=“johnr3, post:15, topic:1486”]
And if they regenerate their missing limbs, all’s good…[/quote]
I forgot to address this comment earlier. Marty’s(reefzig’s) previous comments were made in reference to brittle or serpent stars which are slightly different taxonomically and there for biologically. Brittle stars stomachs and gonads are restricted to only the center of their body while other sea stars they extend through their legs. I don’t know how easily sand sifting star rebuild legs and would actually be surprised to hear if they could. This is something I always wanted to read more about, but never had the time. Perhaps there is something in Mr. Sprung’s invert book I bought this past weekend.
I have acclimated a number of different ways over the years, but I have found that dripping is easiest for me and the animals. Floating the bag and adding small amounts of water every few minutes is more of a pain than just putting the open bags inside a styrofoam cooler and starting a slow drip. I dump half of the water out before I start the drip then as the bag gets full dump it again. By the time it is full a second time usually more than an hour has passed and acclimation is done.
There are so many ways to do things in this hobby, the key is finding the method that works for you and allows you to be successful.
