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Asterina Stars and Zoas


Manny

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Anyone ever see asterina starfish eating their zoas? I had a disc with 5 polyps of my nicest zoas. I saw 2 asterina stars on there and didn't make much of it. A few days later, those zoas were completely gone! There was one polyp left and I saw 2 more try and lay on top of it. I removed them. They keep trying to eat this zoanthid. Well at least I think it does. Have they ever been known to eat zoas?

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Yes. There are asterina starfish eating zoathind species pluck them out of the tank when you see them. Not all asterina starfish will do this only a couple species. That's why I dip and make sure I kill any on frags I get. If you have a bunch of asterina starfish a harlequin shrimp can make short work of them but they may eat urchins too.

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+1 there are over a dozen asterina species out there most which look identical to all but starfish-ologists. Technical term there. I have plucked a few who were noticeably munching on sps before a while back that looked a lot like the benign ones just bigger. Dime sized rather than BB sized

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Interesting. I do dip everything Reburn. I think this might have been one I got a long time ago with a frag. I watched that one single one build of a mid sized population. They don't seem to bother anything else except for this specific zoanthid. I will keep plucking them off when I see them on top of any coral. I need to build up my zoa population since I have very few so don't need things eating them off.

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In all the years I've been keeping reefs I've never had a problem with asterinas, and I am inclined to think the zoas might have had a problem to begin with but that's just a suspicion. As far as size determining the species I've had large ones turn up in a tank periodicly in tanks with smaller ones and the randomness of the occurance along with having legs of equal size and obviously not split recently I've been of the mind for some reason a specimen wasn't suffering a multiple personality disorder and just grew out to it's full potential but there really is no way I could tell one species from the other.

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Agreed. I've never had an issue with asterinas eating zoas unless they were declining in health already. That doesn't mean that some zoa eating types aren't out there but I've had literally thousands of asterinas in my tanks as well as thousands of polyps in my tanks and only the zoas melting away already were "attacked" by the asterinas. To me, they were doing their jobs... cleaning up the decaying/dying matter.

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Makes sense. I did just recently get these zoas back from loaning them to a friend to see if they would start to multiply in his tank. No luck either. They probably didn't like the transition back to my tank. At least I saved one! Maybe ten years from now it will grow back the other 4 polyps that got eaten.

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