I just needed to rant a bit.. asterinas

[gweston]

I just needed to rant a bit..

I had some asterina stars in my tank. I don't have all that many of them, but they were good citizens and helped clean up algae on the rock/glass. They did consume some coraline, but too little to have an affect. It just grew back. They were 'vegetarians'.

Well.. as of recent (as in the past few weeks) a few of them had a change of heart. A few began munching zoas.

The story goes... My two favorite zoas starting looking less healthy, remained closed more often, and slowly began receding. I knew it wasn't off parameters. I began to suspect it as the 'unknown melting zoa phenomenon'. That is.. until last Saturday morning. I caught two of the suckers hanging out ON a zoa. I pulled them off, and immediately noticed that the zoas they were on were partially eaten. I was NOT happy.

Suffice to say. I went to town on the tank. I removed every single asterina I could get my hands on. There are still a few around, but when I see one... out it comes. No more Mr Nice Guy.

Looks like my zoas are toast.. I had an awesome purple (I believe they were purple people eaters), and a nice large cluster of neon green zoas (don't know their street name).

Asterina stars. You are no longer welcome.

 

[dcforester1]

Your Mean! LOL I hate them to, but gave up on picking them out.

Derek

 

[Cherokee_Dude]

That sux, but possibly not the real problem. I've had this happen before and it's possible that they were having at a sick/decaying organism.
One option would be to move any sickly looking polyps to a QT tank for treatment...

In my case, very similar to yours... I honestly believe that it was the well documented and unfortunate 'Unknown Melting Polyp' issue.

 

[JayM]

why can't that melting happen to the brown zoas....

 

[Cherokee_Dude]

lol. It probably would if we named them Brown Hornets...

 

[The Ng Thing]

Maybe we should purchase a BRS Harlequin Shrimp to pass around ... I have a sh*t-ton of them as well ... I just don't want to keep a harlequin in the long run.

 

[joefish]

I was just saying the same thing the other day, those dam asterina stars they are a pain in the butt, there all over the fragin place. So! Harlequin shrimp will eat them. Anybody know what else would eat them??

 

[swampy]

I believe there are several different types, I had two. One was slightly bigger than the rest and didn't multiply as fast, I think that is the bad kind. I had the same thing happen to a few zoa colonies but I'm more on the side of them eating sick ones. But some of those sick ones could have come back. I blame them in part for the demise of my 20+ polyp darth maul colony. The best way to get rid of them is crash your tank. My tank is now asterinas free and I dip all corals so new new ones.

 

[TomD]

I have had many different kind of asterinas and never had any eat corals. Although some believe their is a strain that can eat soft corals, I highly doubt that is the true problem.

 

[swampy]

http://www.coralpedia.org/index.php?module=Gallery2&g2_itemId=1426

 

[cilyjr]

i had never heard this either. so i did some looking and found this at GARF
http://www.garf.org/Star/starfish.html

 

[DoctaQ]

i saw an asterina on my zoas before too, looked like it cleaned a little patch off between zoas, seems like a passing/occasional thing though