aerius007 Posted March 17, 2006 Share Posted March 17, 2006 My live rock is full of purple coraline. I have a red-legged hermit thats shell is also covered in the purple coraline. I have noticed that some of the purple is going away and figured it was possibly due to the fact the tank is only 4 weeks old. That was until I saw an asterina star hitching a ride on the back of the hermit, and about 30% of the purple on his shell is gone. Does this starfish think he is Mike Jones or Paul Wall sipping on some purple drink (if your under 30 you'll get that last comment, if not dont worry your not missing much)? Do they normally eat the coraline like this? I have seen as many as 8 of these starfish and enjoy the coraline much more than the stars. Notice the clowns, they pay no attention to the bubbletip but love the camera Link to comment
mushroom head Posted March 17, 2006 Share Posted March 17, 2006 Ive heard that asterina starfish will eat coraline algae,but my coraline algae grows so fast i dont worry about it. Link to comment
Formerly MikeR. Posted March 17, 2006 Share Posted March 17, 2006 I would watch them , I dont think they are 100% reef safe, may eat corals... Link to comment
rickjg Posted March 17, 2006 Share Posted March 17, 2006 I imported asterina starfish into my last nano tank from a piece of coral I bought. The tank was started with several varities of live rock, purple encrusted from Fiji, green & maroon encrusted from the Marshal Islands, pink encrusted from the Caribbean and blue encrusted from Tonga. The stars starting eating all the coralline, except the pink and purple coraline. You could see clean spots on the rock around every star. After all the coraline was gone that the stars liked, they just disappeared. Link to comment
Recommended Posts
Archived
This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.