Red star fish

[Rc_Logan725]

A few weeks ago I added a red starfish to my 29 gal biocube hqi. Acclimated fine. It immediately climbed up to the top of water. Even had one leg sticking out of the water for a while. Eventually put all legs back in water. It remained in the same spot for 3 days. My bf did a 10% water change as he does on a regular basis. During water change the star fell off the glass and was sitting on top of sand bed. Where it sat for a full day, it's legs would move into upward position one even looked like it was trying to get back up the glass. Next day I noticed it was still sitting in sand. And the following day it looked like it was beginning to fall apart. I took it out and put in its own space to see if I could get it to recover, it's little whitish hair things came out of it's legs and its legs seemed to open up for a few minutes, I could see that it wasn't dead yet but I never did get it to recover.
I can't figure out what happened to it.
Any ideas?

 

[Gweeds1980]

A few weeks ago I added a red starfish to my 29 gal biocube hqi. Acclimated fine. It immediately climbed up to the top of water. Even had one leg sticking out of the water for a while. Eventually put all legs back in water. It remained in the same spot for 3 days. My bf did a 10% water change as he does on a regular basis. During water change the star fell off the glass and was sitting on top of sand bed. Where it sat for a full day, it's legs would move into upward position one even looked like it was trying to get back up the glass. Next day I noticed it was still sitting in sand. And the following day it looked like it was beginning to fall apart. I took it out and put in its own space to see if I could get it to recover, it's little whitish hair things came out of it's legs and its legs seemed to open up for a few minutes, I could see that it wasn't dead yet but I never did get it to recover.
I can't figure out what happened to it.
Any ideas?

How did you acclimate? Stars are very sensitive to chemistry changes... could be that something changing - pH, alk, salinity, nitrates etc shocked it. Did you test the water it was already in?

 

[Rc_Logan725]

Which water are you referring to? I drip acclimated it.

 

[Gweeds1980]

Which water are you referring to? I drip acclimated it.

The LFS water vs your water... how long did you drip for?

 

[tdileo]

During the water change was the starfish out of the water? They can't have more than a tiny bit of their bodies exposed to air unless you get really lucky