Feeding Unwanted Palythoas to CC starfish?

NeutronMan · Jul 24, 2026

Hi everyone,

I have a Harlequin that is going to be needing some CC starfish for food soon. I setup a CC starfish tank and was wondering if I could feed unwanted palythoas to them? I know they’ll eat pretty much anything but I have a lot of those big green and toxic looking palythoas in another tank that need some reducing…

Would feeding them toxic palythoas result in a toxic starfish?

The plan would be to move the “infested” rocks to the CC tank for removal.

Thanks!

Saltyreef · Jul 27, 2026

Its worth a try. I dont think anything will happen to the shrimp if they munch on the choco stars that have eaten the palys.

exnisstech · Jul 27, 2026

Anecdotal but I'm not sure how much paly toxin really affects tank inhabitants if at all. I had a back wall covered with the nuclear green palys and I used to rip them off by the dozens using forceps and nothing in the tank skipped a beat. I don't run gac either.

Stomatopods17 · Jul 30, 2026

Palytoxin is second only to maitotoxin in terms of most poisonous non-protein substances on the planet.

Just worth keeping in mind for your own safety, marine life will often choose to not touch it or rely on skin coating/shells to avoid exposure. That's why dinos are a massive pain to deal with cause nothing touches it or some stuff dies trying to due to the toxins it can produce, there's not enough things in the hobby that directly have the stomache acids to break down those substances before it enters a bloodstream of some kind. There's that infamous case from texas where palytoxin also killed the fish in the tank when it poisoned the family.

There are incidents of palytoxin being found in starfish. The crown of thorns was reported vectoring palytoxin from eating palythoa, even though it has no real purpose for recycling it since it already does have a toxin of its own. How this affects a harlequin shrimp, no clue but it seems like starfish aren't affected on a systematic level nor do they really process it into a different state well. They primary in hard corals anyways.