Excellent post, I have had my linckia for well over a year now but lately he does seem to be really moving around the tank to find his food. He still looks healthy so I hope he is finding what he needs. I let the glass get dirty to help him.It looks to me like your starfish may be dying - most stars in aquaria die by basically dropping legs and disintegrating. The symptoms seem similar to me to Sea Star Wasting Disease (SSWD), but I don’t know if they're actually related. Some SSWD info: “Symptoms typically include the appearance of white lesions followed by tissue decay, body fragmentation and death, often within only a few days.”*
Hopefully someone experienced with starfish (preferably professionally) can chime in here and confirm if the regular starfish death in aquaria is related to SSWD or not.
On a related note, what species is your starfish? I'd normally guess it's a Linckia "laevigata" (an ecophenotype of Linckia multifora), but it seems to have ridges on its arms that would indicate to me that it's a different species. Either way, most starfish don't actually eat algae (at least not primarily), so while the algae wafer are good for feeding your snails, they're pretty much useless for feeding the starfish. Unfortunately, for most starfish species, the frozen foods would be mostly useless too. As Lavey29 mentioned above, many starfish (including Linckia spp. stars) primarily eat biofilm (a mashup of bacteria, cyanobacteria, diatoms, fungi, etc.), which is something we can't really replicate in our aquariums for them - so most stars are thought to starve in our systems.
*The link I pulled the symptoms quote from:
Not really sure I got him from a local shop I've been using for a while now for all my saltwater needs I just know he's reef safe this kind of makes me sad that he maybe dying..... I've had my tank for about 6 or 7 months now and this is the second star to die since starting it I check my parameters daily to try and keep them happy....... since I have live rock live sand coral fish and Invertebrates alive and the stars have definitely been that biggest challenge for meIt looks to me like your starfish may be dying - most stars in aquaria die by basically dropping legs and disintegrating. The symptoms seem similar to me to Sea Star Wasting Disease (SSWD), but I don’t know if they're actually related. Some SSWD info: “Symptoms typically include the appearance of white lesions followed by tissue decay, body fragmentation and death, often within only a few days.”*
Hopefully someone experienced with starfish (preferably professionally) can chime in here and confirm if the regular starfish death in aquaria is related to SSWD or not.
On a related note, what species is your starfish? I'd normally guess it's a Linckia "laevigata" (an ecophenotype of Linckia multifora), but it seems to have ridges on its arms that would indicate to me that it's a different species. Either way, most starfish don't actually eat algae (at least not primarily), so while the algae wafer are good for feeding your snails, they're pretty much useless for feeding the starfish. Unfortunately, for most starfish species, the frozen foods would be mostly useless too. As Lavey29 mentioned above, many starfish (including Linckia spp. stars) primarily eat biofilm (a mashup of bacteria, cyanobacteria, diatoms, fungi, etc.), which is something we can't really replicate in our aquariums for them - so most stars are thought to starve in our systems.
*The link I pulled the symptoms quote from:
Honestly, most real starfish do poorly in our tanks at the moment (a few hobbyists and professionals are working on figuring out how to keep them long term, but it may be a long time before we figure it out properly), so I wouldn’t be too hard on yourself if it dies.
