Asterina?

[Jvesche20]

is this an asterina? If so will it eat my coralline? I would rather keep my coralline algae than this guy.

 

[JasonK84]

It is asterina and I don’t think you need to worry about losing coralline algae to this guy. They can however become overpopulated if let to get out of control.

 

[WV Reefer]

is this an asterina? If so will it eat my coralline? I would rather keep my coralline algae than this guy.

It is an Asterina and some do eat coralline.

 

[Jvesche20]

It is asterina and I don’t think you need to worry about losing coralline algae to this guy. They can however become overpopulated if let to get out of control.

Thanks!

 

[Duffer]

And a few are know to eat zoa’s...I had a few in my tank that turn out in a day to be a few hundred...got a harlequin shrimp and he took care of the issue..still have the shrimp as I feed him cc starfish that I keep in my sump

 

[Jvesche20]

And a few are know to eat zoa’s...I had a few in my tank that turn out in a day to be a few hundred...got a harlequin shrimp and he took care of the issue..still have the shrimp as I feed him cc starfish that I keep in my sump

If I see more then I'll have to get one. I took the one out that I saw. I've seen a few before but thought nothing of it because they were tiny. This one was massive though so he had to go.

 

[SPR1968]

The asterina starfish can also eat corals, certainly the variety I have, and they can multiply into plague numbers. They destroyed some very large GSP corals and also started eating SPS flesh.

Just remember that the Harlequin shrimp only eats starfish and without a constant supply it will starve, so I wouldn’t add one until you see a lot of starfish for it to feed on, or get ready to catch him and take him back to the LFS

If it were me, from my own coral eating experience, I would manually remove them and see if that keeps the numbers under control for a while, and if that doesn’t work consider the harlequin.