Crazy New Inverts

[MolaMola]

Well, the company I got our classroom's live rock from, Tampa Bay Saltwater, sent us a surprise package - a special one! It was bags of fascinating inverts, gorgonians, and sponges. Here are a couple of highlights:
Basket Star! His name is Curry.

Not thrilled by this gorgonian? Look carefully at the dark spots. Live barnacles are in there! You can see them open and close and extend feathery feeders!

I am trying to learn more about our assortment of new crabs, too. At this rate, we will never get more fish than our chromis because we are mesmerized by inverts. I highly recommend TBS if you are in the market for fresh, healthy inverts and Florida/Caribbean species.

 

[Ashalye]

Curry looks so cool! What a fun new critter.

 

[roostertech]

From what I read basket star / feather star are super hard to keep? Super cool, hope it last.

 

[anathema]

We used to pull up giant orange basket stars on halibut longlines off the aleutians. They are awesome, I'd fill a tote with water and toss any interesting critters in it.

The basket stars eat almost anything!

 

[Ibn]

Basket stars are filter feeders and unless you have a dedicated feeding system that continuously dump food into the tank, it'll be impossible to keep them from starving.

 

[Bruce Spiegelman]

Basket stars are filter feeders and unless you have a dedicated feeding system that continuously dump food into the tank, it'll be impossible to keep them from starving.

They do have a steady supply of Rotifers at the school.

 

[MolaMola]

Sigh. I thought it would eat like a brittle star with plankton supplement. I will up the flow tomorrow and feed it more. Thanks for info. Sounds like a hgh flow jellyfish tank would make a good habitat for it.

 

[Ibn]

They do have a steady supply of Rotifers at the school.

In that case, hope it does well. The folks that have kept them for a decent amount of time, 2 years+, are feeding them 3x a day in mostly NPS tanks with cyclopeeze/calanus. They are very susceptible to nitrate spikes and perish when levels hit 20 ppm or higher. You're basically looking at a high input (food-wise) tank with heavy exports. They go really quickly if they start dropping arms.

The tank should be large enough where the basket can stretch/unfurl both ends of the arm without touching the ends of the tank.

 

[MolaMola]

Okay, so I would at least like to try to keep this basket star alive, so what do you (anyone) think about putting it in our bucket of rotifer culture overnight? Good source of phyto and zooplankton or terrible idea? Not sure if I can get temp and salinity close enough. Just putting it out there.

 

[Bruce Spiegelman]

Plumb a tank so that the rotifer culture flows through it. Make a great tank for the basket star and gorgonians that need a constant flow.