Sand sifting sea star (Astropecten polycanthus) - issues

[Alexander1312]

We have this guy for 1 year and 3 months without any issues until recently, when we noticed that he lost part of his leg.

While I can see some very predetarioal inverts we have in this tank attacking it - or the two triggers (?), I assume the root cause is more related to not getting enough food anymore (?).

Also, there is some correlation to when we started with heavy sandbed cleaning weekly due to higher nutrients several weeks ago.

I do not plan to not clean the sandbed anymore, and neither am I am planning to increase feeding (daily: 4x dry food, 1 x seaweed, 1 x frozen food). But are there any more specific feeding techniques recommended to get him back on track?

I might PIF it soon to not let it suffer much longer.

 

[Kensington Reefer]

I have one of these stars, it’s over 8 yeas old!
There’s a 3”-4” sand bed that also houses 2 to 6 engineer gobies (I don’t see them all at once, so I’m not sure how many are actually there)
I have never done anything to “clean” the sand bed
That said, I’m not sure why yours is missing that tip of an arm.
Many years ago, there was a red hairy reef lobster that I’m sure would annoy the star, but it’s no longer an issue
Hopefully yours will recover

 

[derek_SR]

Rehome it if you are going to continue to clean the sand bed, these are not fit for most tanks without super mature substrate full of goodies. Mine is going on 2 years.

 

[Alexander1312]

I have one of these stars, it’s over 8 yeas old!
There’s a 3”-4” sand bed that also houses 2 to 6 engineer gobies (I don’t see them all at once, so I’m not sure how many are actually there)
I have never done anything to “clean” the sand bed
That said, I’m not sure why yours is missing that tip of an arm.
Many years ago, there was a red hairy reef lobster that I’m sure would annoy the star, but it’s no longer an issue
Hopefully yours will recover

Yes, I feel I have a few (aggressive) crabs and at least one larger pistol shrimps (all from live rock), and a firefirsh who sleeps in a tiny cave on the sandbed had several parts of his fins rip out recently (has since grown back nicely though). But I do think lack of feed might still be the root cause.

 

[Alexander1312]

Rehome it if you are going to continue to clean the sand bed, these are not fit for most tanks without super mature substrate full of goodies. Mine is going on 2 years.

Yes, and I lean towards rehoming just to not take any chances.

However, I challenge that a clean sandbed and a mature sandbed cannot overlap, if that is what you are implying. There seems to be visually is a ton of live in my sandbed (almost too much I often feel, all types of worms, still some bristleworms, other ton of other starfish etc ).

But the lack of food (maybe taken up by the others, nassarius, conches etc, could eventually cause a further decline across all species within the sandbed.