PROOF - Asterina Starfish Eating Zoas

Wy Renegade

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Mine always eat the coralline algae.

Hhhhmmm maybe this is why I have little to no coralline algae on the topsides of my rocks in my reef. LOL, and here I was always blaming the lighting.
 

Brent Ward

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Mine leaves spots of lighter pink spots after they move that glow under my blue LEDs. I recently picked up a harly to take care of them. I love the harlys and will probably rotate choco chip stars in my fuge to feed them.
 

tampasnooker

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asterinapredator1.jpg

If you look at the top left of the dead skeleton, you see enough proof to me. With respect to Mr Calfo's immense experience and contributions, my opinion on asterinas is that MOST are harmless herbivores in terms of overall populations. However in an aquarium, 2 things tilt the scales: first as already pointed out, when they run out of algae, they will turn to other food sources. Coral tissue contains algae. Second, where did the specimen in YOUR tank come from? Perhaps it simply came in on live rock, but more likely it came in on a coral it was feeding on. The species in my picture ate most zoas in my tank then moved on to sample Acans, Blastos, Chalices and Pocillopora before I fell in love with my harlequin shrimp. If bad asterinas enter the aquarium on corals they are preying on, the 5% bad guys number could easily be flipped the other way to be 95% bad guys.
 

shred5

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I have posted this before but there are different types of these stars, some will eat coral and some don’t. I have had some in my reef for years that never caused an issue as well as several of my friends who had the same ones. I believe the ones that are darker are coral eaters and yes I have seen them do it, and the white ones seem to be ok. But there could be different species of both colors too. Mine just died out a few years ago for some reason and have not seen one for years.

Dave Polzin
 
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jarred1

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I have some of these stars in both of my tanks and the only time i see them bother any of my zoas is when I stop feeding the tank. Even then they only seem to bother only the People Eater type zoas.
 

Lmecher

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I have the dark gray type in my 120 octopus tank. I have been puling them out daily. I average about 30 a day. My goochster zoas are disappearing. My colony was huge, hundreds of polyps, now I count only 15 left. I have quite a few leathers and palays that have not been touched by these stars. If it were not for my resident octopus, I'd get a couple harlequin shrimp. I am so sick of fighting this battle. I seem to be loosing. The ones on the live rock are almost impossible to see, I can only remove the ones on the glass. I considered moving my goochsters to another tank but fear transferring the star problem along with them. It would only take one.
 

kingfisherfleshy

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There are a ton in my old 75g mixed reef.

They are grazing on the glass even during the day because the tank has been coasting ever since I sold it.

The coraline is a very pale color, and I never knew what to attribute this to, but now we have a potential culprit I guess.

I never noticed any damage to the bases of my sps...but the bottoms of some of my plating monti's did die off (granted, this will happen with large colonies sometimes)

Who knows...the best thing I got out of this thread is that keeping a harlequin might be possible, and that would be awesome. What do they turn to after you run out of stars...going to do some more research on that topic now. :D
 

RonMidtownStomp

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I can't believe that there are people saying that these are harmless. I have watched them on MULTIPLE occasions do enough damage to otherwise healthy zoa colonies that they can not recover and I've lost multiple whole coloines. I resist the academic argument that there are different species and insist that they are all vile. I have killed literally thousands in the last year trying to reduce their population. I believe that they eat coraline, and I'm am absolutely sure that they will cover a polyp as in the initial picture and are capable of eating most of it and leaving behind a dying mass.

The health of that polyp is irrelevant due to the fact that unhealthy can mean recovering and asterina attack now means certain death.

The best non-predatory way to kill them is to siphon them off of the glass. I have a long hose that I run out into the front yard and kill at least 100 at a time.
 

Ninjapotamus

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i have billions of these starfish. i even have a harlequin who eats them nonstop but cant catch up. i thought they were hurting my zoas... then my blue hippo started wiping out entire colonies per day. i miss my starfish.
 

stevo01

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I just bought a large polyp/zoa covered rock. About the size of a baseball. There were 2 asternia starfish on the colony when I pulled if out of the bag. I picked them off and chucked them. Don't need them and don't care to test to see if these actually eat zoo's.
 

Graffiti Spot

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The ones that are blue tinted will eat zoa's.
The white ones are fine but like stated before will eat sick polyps.
I have even had a darker kind with a pretty Patten of splotches attack my porites colony to the point it was dying. They were actually eating the coral visibly.

I have not seen any in any kind of population in my tank for a bit. It's been about two years. I will see one every week maybe. Not sure why, maybe they are like algaes and they have cycles where there are problems numbers.
 

MikeyAl

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Not much more to say, but while I was eating dinner this little guy was feasting on my Darth Maul frag. Seconds later he was in the dry cup with the other 20+ i've pulled from the tank this week.

The frag on the right is the scene of the crime.
SAM_0610.jpg


After his tasty meal..
SAM_0613.jpg


You've been warned.
Kron: here is what I just posted same on another thread. Monsters. Get rid of them.
 

MikeyAl

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Im not saying this is a lie. But i have had these stars for 3 years in my tanks and never have had them eat a coral of any kind..
I thought same KLR. Only to find out this week that my zoas are getting killed by these thugs. I just dipped a bunch and pulled out asterina at roots. Only explanation.
 

MikeyAl

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It's an interesting debate. We have lots of input from the proponents and opponents, educated and the (we'll call it, just learning), initiate and the uninitiated. Point is, the debate goes on and I'm not sure anyone is being swayed one way or the other no matter what anyone else says (sounds like our current presidential race).
At any rate, at this point, since I have found them on my zoas, and those zoas weren't opening, I can only assume it was due to the asterina I found on them. They may have been harmlessly eating something else and just causing the zoas to close. But I am going to err on the side of caution and assume they are zoa eaters and keep them out of my tank until there is empirical evidence to the contrary. I have too much invested in my zoa garden.
 

oceanrider

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Ok, so I target feed the corals, and in my 32 gallon reef tank, there is only a flagtail blenny and a multibanded pipefish, so not much in feeding leftovers on the ground.

Well, recently asterina starfishes started coming out, splitting, and half stars were walking around, eating algae.

But since very little left over food in small tank, last night, one of the starfishes must have gotten hungry, and climbed onto a live birdsnest coral.

Today, you can see the path of destruction..............clear as a bulldozer pathway across the birdsnest arms, and those areas not subject to the rasping teeth are all open.

Its clearly the starfish, since I dont have any snails,

Well, all I can say, is to feed those starfish, or else if they get very hungry they will turn against anything they touch.
 
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