chocolate chip starfish

melo

How peaceful is the chocolate chip starfish? I have an 80 gallon and currently have no fish or inverts in it, is this type of starfish a good starter fish and are my choices for other fish still broad? I have heard that they will attack snails, if this is true then how will I keep algae under control?

dallops_of_polyps

they will eat corals nudibranchs. the best one thats peaceful is this one a marbled sea star http://www.liveaquaria.com/product/p...fm?pCatId=2133

Cody

Only good for FOWLR or FO. They will attack other inverts and eat corals.

melo

ok so i ended up getting a chocolate chip starfish last night, I am setting up a FOWLR tank so there will be no coral. Anyways i set him down at the bottom of the tank on the sand and he moved at first but then he has not moved since, he has been COMPLETELY motionless for about two hours now, is this normal or did he die already??? The turbo snail is doing fine and the three green chromis i got are doing fine as well, so is this normal behavior for a starfish?

Cody

How did you acclimate him? I think it would be in shock espically if you didn't use a drip acclimation. You should Drip Acclimate fro every invert, espically starfish. They are very sensitive to water quality.

gymnothorax

Although choc. chips are one of the easiest to transfer and acclimate, starfish in general are very sensitive to fluctuations in salinity and ph. I generally recommend drip acclimating them for atleast an hour when transfering them from one tank to another, however, it's likely that your star will come around and start moving within a day or 2 assuming nothing in your tank is out of wack, what are your current h2o parameters, ph, salinity, ammonia, nitrite, nitrate..?

melo

ok well I was just being paranoid, he is doing well and has eaten the two pieces of krill I have given him. I guess he was just shocked for a little bit, no worries. This leads me to another question though, on my sand band their is this gold-sulfur colored stuff, I checked my nitrates and ammonia and they are all normal and my salinity is at 1.023 I am going to try and get a picture of it soon.

melo

eglavasa240

just a tip, if you can see the tentacles moving at all then its a sign its not dead. But you have to look really really closely. A guy at an opposite pet store of where i got mine told me that if a chocolate chip starfish dies it can emit a poison into the water that can wipe out EVERYTHING! it touches. So beaware of that too. (I like how no one told me that when i got it)

gymnothorax

that algae is brown diatoms, excess silicates in your water. Most phostphate removers will remove silicates and starve the algae, or if you use RO water for your water changes the diatoms will starve themselves and die off on there own. As far as chocolate chips emitting poison, that lfs worker is probably confusing the starfish with either sea-apples or some other cucumber capable of causing tank wipe-outs. The star will fowl the water if left dead in your tank, but it will not emit any poison.