What's attacking my new starfish

[gcarcher59]

Recently added this guy to my 160 gallon mixed reef. Not sure who or what has decided to munch on my new starfish. I have fire shrimp and cleaner shrimp, hawkfish, but other than that pretty much reef friendly only fish (tangs, clowns, brittle star, loads of tiny asterina star, snails, etc) . Please see pics and video, I moved him into my q tank for now to hopefully let him heal.

Thanks, Greg

 

[twentyleagues]

Could be from lack of food. They will start to deteriorate loosing arms and wasting away. Hard to tell from video what it is for sure but a lot of them live off biofilms for the majority of nutrition.

 

[gcarcher59]

Could be from lack of food. They will start to deteriorate loosing arms and wasting away. Hard to tell from video what it is for sure but a lot of them live off biofilms for the majority of nutrition.

Interesting, my reef is over 2 years old and it has only been in the tank less than a week..

 

[ISpeakForTheSeas]

Looks like Nardoa frianti (Friant's Sea Star); Nardoa spp. are currently thought to be biofilm eaters. Unless it was unhealthy when captured or it has been in the fish store/supply chain for a months, I wouldn't expect it to be starving so soon.

To my knowledge, none of its tankmates should be causing it issues (it's possible one is, it's just not likely), so I'm not sure what would be causing this so soon, but I do know this happens occasionally with some starfish. It's possible that it had issues with transport or acclimation - I know a lot of people report starfish being very sensitive to acclimation - but I'm somewhat doubtful.

Again, not sure what would be causing, but (barring any illness being the cause) if it can find enough to feed on with good enough water quality, it should recover.

 

[gcarcher59]

Looks like Nardoa frianti (Friant's Sea Star); Nardoa spp. are currently thought to be biofilm eaters. Unless it was unhealthy when captured or it has been in the fish store/supply chain for a months, I wouldn't expect it to be starving so soon.

To my knowledge, none of its tankmates should be causing it issues (it's possible one is, it's just not likely), so I'm not sure what would be causing this so soon, but I do know this happens occasionally with some starfish. It's possible that it had issues with transport or acclimation - I know a lot of people report starfish being very sensitive to acclimation - but I'm somewhat doubtful.

Again, not sure what would be causing, but (barring any illness being the cause) if it can find enough to feed on with good enough water quality, it should recover.

Thanks for the reply and the ID, the first day I got it, it didn't move, i nudged it and it took off all over the tank for a few days it was cruising all over my rocks and I thought it was happy. Yesterday it went to the top of the glass near the water surface and I noticed its legs were degrading so I figured it was trying to get away from something munching on it in the rocks. Anyway I will continue to monitor it in the smaller tank. Likely it pulled out of it's preferred environment so lacking the correct food is a good guess.