AlexMorsePremium Posted January 8, 2017 Share Posted January 8, 2017 Spotted this guy on my back wall the other day Today found him near some zoas and noticed he'd grown and changed shape noticeably I *thought* it was a snail, maybe a spiny astraea? but now it's spines seem to be hugging that rock, and that's not a very snaily thing to do... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gig 'em @ NDstructible Posted January 8, 2017 Share Posted January 8, 2017 That's an asterina starfish Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AlexMorsePremium Posted January 8, 2017 Author Share Posted January 8, 2017 That fits... I did not realize they could have so many "legs" Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ShawnM Posted January 8, 2017 Share Posted January 8, 2017 That's an asterina starfish +1 Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Timfish Posted January 8, 2017 Share Posted January 8, 2017 That's 2 different astrerinas. They reproduce by splitting and can have from 4 to 8 "legs". You don't see them very often but each "leg" has a bunch of tube feet like their bigger siblings species. They reproduce by splitting so the "legs" may be different sizes like in the first picture. I've never had any problems with them in all the years I've been keeping them. There are reports of them eating polyps and corals but I think in most of these cases there was an overriding issue causing problems and the asterinas were just doing their job and cleaning up. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AlexMorsePremium Posted January 8, 2017 Author Share Posted January 8, 2017 I did some reading, and it seems the consensus is there might be one type that'll go after polyps, but most varieties of asterina are only after algae and such. Fingers crossed! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Timfish Posted January 8, 2017 Share Posted January 8, 2017 Just remember polyps can have algae growing on them and asterinas will try to eat the algae. Seeing an asterina on a polyp doesn't mean it's actually attacking the polyp but might actually be an indicator you have another problem that's starting to show itself. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Neon Reefer Posted January 10, 2017 Share Posted January 10, 2017 I had an outbreak of them and when the numbers got large they attacked my plating SPS corals and devastated them. I manually removed and got a single harlequin shrimp which did them in. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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