Starfish In Trouble

[Lynnds6]

I just got a starfish about 2 weeks ago. He has been super mobile and appears to be doing well. Plenty of established live rock in the tank and I feed brine and mysis shrimp on the regular for my dragonet and pipefish. So he was fine when I left for work and I came home to a "tear" in him with some flesh exposed. He is currently still moving about the tank. Is there anything I can do for him? Do you think my Halloween crab could have got him? Not sure how to proceed as this is my first starfish! Please help!

 

[Flippers4pups]

Feed it some frozen food and observe. Hope it makes it!

 

[redfishbluefish]

Most starfish are meat-eaters, and need more than the scrapes left behind from feeding your fish. Buy some clams, freeze them, and now open one, scoop it out, and cut off a good chunk. I thinking, dependent on the size of the clams, you'll get 4 to 6 chunks from a clam. Defrost one chunk in some tank water and direct feed the starfish.

 

[rkpetersen]

First, welcome to R2R! :) I'm sorry that your first post is about a problem, but stick around, there's lots of neat stuff here.

That's a Fromia sea star. They're pretty delicate, and what they eat isn't always clear. They may reject proffered food. They're also pretty susceptible to shipping and acclimation stress and can start to die/disintegrate soon or a short while after arrival. Although that's a very odd pattern of damage/injury because stress-induced failure or starvation typically starts at the tips of the arms, so I'm not entirely sure what's going on there. I've never seen a crab attack a star, although I've never owned a Halloween.

 

[Lynnds6]

Thank you for the reply! Will definitely try the clams! Will he be able to recover from the tear?

 

[rkpetersen]

Will he be able to recover from the tear?

Possible, but odds are usually not good. How's it look today?

 

[Lynnds6]

I'm starting to think it could be a fungus. Today I checked him out this morning, no progressing problem and he was moving about the tank. Tonight I looked again and there are 2 more spots with the gray/pink puffing out on other arms. I don't think he was attacked by anything as the halloween hermit crab has stayed in the same area all day and was not in his path. I hope he can get over whatever this is!

 

[Lynnds6]

Here is a picture but he is hard to get a good photo of as he's across the tank (and I didn't want to mess with him).

 

[Lynnds6]

I think it may be seastar wasting syndrome :(

 

[Lynnds6]

I just removed him today. It was now affecting his stomach and his debris was floating into the tank. I read up on it, looks like they think this could be related to some virus but there are a few colleges still researching it.