asterina stars, harmful for SPS?

[ryanjiang]

Lately I have tons of asterina stars in my tank, in few occasions I saw one or two asterina climbing into the branch of acros. Is this a problem for SPS?

I had some tissue loss (not major) from few Acros & overall less PE , I think it is due to a recent ALK issue ( from 8-9 to 6.5) caused by jamming of dosing tube. Could it also related to the asterina invading ?

 

[tuberider]

Depends on how much food is available and what type of Asterinas they are, IME they generally start with Zoas and move along from there when dining on coral.

How about a pic or two of the damage?

 

[GreshamH]

They've never touched any of my corals as far as I can tell.. but like Jeremy said, there are more then one species

 

[Gonzo]

Anyone know of any methods to kil astrea snails? Mine are getting out of control.

 

[A_Lee]

Anyone know of any methods to kil astrea snails? Mine are getting out of control.

Asterina stars you mean?

 

[Gonzo]

HAha - sorry, I was watching TV while typing out Asterina and I guess my mind thought of Astrea snails.

Yea, asterina stars, how do I kill these bad boys?

 

[Tumbleweed]

Harlequin Shrimp, just need to continue to feed them after they eat of of the Asterina. Or pass it on to another person with the same problem.

Depending on how many you have, I have found just spending some time picking them out of the tank every night and after a couple of days most are gone. Not all but most.

 

[ryanjiang]

I bought a herliquin shrimp for that purpose, it getting fatter and survived 1st rb treatment. But no noticable reduction of asterina though, guess I need to do some manual remove as well

 

[tuberider]

I herd my Asterinas over to my harley using a scraper in the AM before the lights come on and they skitter away, just push them off in the general direction of the shrimp.

 

[Gonzo]

To your harley?

 

[tuberider]

Yep.

 

[Gonzo]

Sorry, what's a "harley"? I'm assuming not the motorcycle

 

[GreshamH]

Look at the two posts above his.... Harlequin shrimp!!!

 

[Gonzo]

Gresham: I was thinking "harley" was some sort of thing like a water pump or whatever. No need for the 3 exclamation points.

 

[GreshamH]

YOU read too much into my use of 3 !!!! Look at 90% of my posts... I use three periods as well

 

[Gonzo]

:bigsmile: !!!!

 

[ryanjiang]

harley, harley, my harley looks like it was drunk & dancing after I did 2nd dose of 'magic RB mass construction pill in tablet form', never seen him since then. I suspect he did not make it.

Now I am gonna do some manual remove & throw in another harley if I will not see my old harley in awhile.

Jeremy I will try to snap a picture for you inspection soon. I planned to do last night but fell in asleep after I read to my son.

 

[anderson99]

I feed them to my leptastrea. Kinda crazy to watch a piece of coral slowly eat a starfish.

 

[ryanjiang]

Depends on how much food is available and what type of Asterinas they are, IME they generally start with Zoas and move along from there when dining on coral.

How about a pic or two of the damage?

Depends on how much food is available and what type of Asterinas they are, IME they generally start with Zoas and move along from there when dining on coral.

How about a pic or two of the damage?

Jeremy, here is one pic, the 30K Lokani started TN few days ago, now TN seems slowed down but not much tissue remaining, can it make it? It was light purple with beautiful smooth skin. It has encrusted a lot just when I think it is about to take off.

This blue tenius TN from bottom, it still has OK PE but less than before. Also my two monti caps started RTN and looks pretty bad now, in fact they seldom look happy in my tank, even before I had the ALK issue, other plating monti & encrusting monti are doing good though. Any idea? I started thinking of potassium, since I daily dose few drops of MB7 (without Vodka or other carbon source). I have a brightwell Potassium on hand, thinking of starting to dose some weekly, see if it will help.

P.S on a bright notes, I just found my harley survived 2nd dose of interceptor & eating asterinas on the glass

 

[screebo]

I feed them to my leptastrea. Kinda crazy to watch a piece of coral slowly eat a starfish.

Well, I'll be dipped. I continue to keep learning here. I have some very healthy and fast growing Sunset Leptastrea the looks like a hair monster these days. I'm gonna try it, dropping a bugger-star, of which I have a couple, into it's maw...... :O