jeffchapok
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Okay, I know the feelings about sand sifting starfish, but I have one so let's move on...
This is the second one I've had. The first one was about a year ago and my tank was only a couple of months old. Although I tried feeding him nori, I'm pretty sure he starved. But before he died, he would regularly dig down into my substrate, which is the rather course CaribSea Hawaiian black coral. This probably isn't the optimal substrate for these creatures, but it didn't seem to be a problem for him. In fact, when I first added him to the tank, he immediately dug under and I thought to myself, "Well, that's the last we'll ever see of that". But he would make occasional appearances and crawl up the glass, etc.
Now that I know more about them, I suspect the reason he would climb up the glass was that he was searching for food. I got this second one 3 months or so ago because my tank is now more mature and when I stir up the substrate, clouds of detritus come up. I do not vacuum it regularly, and I probably overfeed too. I have lots of spaghetti worms in my substrate and a few bristle worms and Nassarius snails. I'm not concerned -- I welcome the diversity. But I figured I had enough matter to keep a sand suffer alive now and that he would help clean things up a bit.
So here's the thing... It never digs into the substrate like the other one did. On the couple of occasions that I've buried it myself, in a matter of an hour or less it's back on top.
It climbs up the glass regularly and all over the rocks. But never buries itself. I would would again guess that it's searching for food, but it certainly doesn't appear to be starving. In fact, I'm pretty sure it's grown over the past few months. I've placed nori in the tank, but never seen it touch it.
So here are my guesses as to why:
1) Food is plentiful enough on the surface of my substrate that it doesn't have to dig in search of it.
2) It doesn't like the course substrate, in spite of the fact that the first one didn't mind. Maybe that one was just more desperate for food. But it buried itself right away, so that doesn't seem likely.
3) This one is afraid of the dark.
Any thoughts? Does anyone else have one that also remains topside?
Here's how I found it this morning:
This is the second one I've had. The first one was about a year ago and my tank was only a couple of months old. Although I tried feeding him nori, I'm pretty sure he starved. But before he died, he would regularly dig down into my substrate, which is the rather course CaribSea Hawaiian black coral. This probably isn't the optimal substrate for these creatures, but it didn't seem to be a problem for him. In fact, when I first added him to the tank, he immediately dug under and I thought to myself, "Well, that's the last we'll ever see of that". But he would make occasional appearances and crawl up the glass, etc.
Now that I know more about them, I suspect the reason he would climb up the glass was that he was searching for food. I got this second one 3 months or so ago because my tank is now more mature and when I stir up the substrate, clouds of detritus come up. I do not vacuum it regularly, and I probably overfeed too. I have lots of spaghetti worms in my substrate and a few bristle worms and Nassarius snails. I'm not concerned -- I welcome the diversity. But I figured I had enough matter to keep a sand suffer alive now and that he would help clean things up a bit.
So here's the thing... It never digs into the substrate like the other one did. On the couple of occasions that I've buried it myself, in a matter of an hour or less it's back on top.
It climbs up the glass regularly and all over the rocks. But never buries itself. I would would again guess that it's searching for food, but it certainly doesn't appear to be starving. In fact, I'm pretty sure it's grown over the past few months. I've placed nori in the tank, but never seen it touch it.
So here are my guesses as to why:
1) Food is plentiful enough on the surface of my substrate that it doesn't have to dig in search of it.
2) It doesn't like the course substrate, in spite of the fact that the first one didn't mind. Maybe that one was just more desperate for food. But it buried itself right away, so that doesn't seem likely.
3) This one is afraid of the dark.
Any thoughts? Does anyone else have one that also remains topside?
Here's how I found it this morning:
