Sea Star Wasting Disease?

marxman · Feb 11, 2022

Hi All,

I have had a sand sifting sea star in my tank for the last few months.
A few weeks ago I had a return pump fail which caused the temperature of my display tank to drop to about 69F for a day. During this time I lost some sps corals, but most other corals and fish were fine.

Unfortunately, since that incident my sand sifting star fish has never seemed right. He stopped moving around the tank, or was very very slow when he did. Did not burrow under the sand like before, and has recently has what looked like part of an arm just disintegrate.

All of this sounds like what I have read about Sea Star Wasting Disease... and I guess my question is; is there anything I can do for this guy or is he too far gone? also how can you tell when a star fish is dead? :(

Uncle99 · Feb 11, 2022

When he starts coming apart.
For the most part, Stars don’t last long in the glass box.
They likely consume the food supply quickly, then starve.

marxman · Feb 12, 2022

Uncle99 said:
When he starts coming apart.
For the most part, Stars don’t last long in the glass box.
They likely consume the food supply quickly, then starve.

thanks for answer!

As a follow up to this; if one of the arms of the star had decayed... is that detrimental to the water quality?
I know there are certain things in a reef tank that when they die are poisonous to other life forms in the tank. Is a starfish like that at all? Or is their demise relatively harmless like when a fish dies.

JumboShrimp · Feb 12, 2022

In a cycled tank (obviously), I vote "Harmless," ;)

Ribo15 · Feb 12, 2022

I unfortunately had one waste away and it was sad. It seemed to start slowly and he would still move about as limbs were “rotting” in a sense then over a couple days he moved into a corner of the tank and really started to dissolve at that point I pulled him out as he was just a mess of tissue.