brittle starfish goes on murderous rampage.

well, a fish disappeared. it happens. no body, no suspects. it was a sailfin blennie. 200 lbs of rock in a 180 g tank. **** happens. a couple weeks later, i have a missing anthia. gone. no trace. 2 days after that, i catch my brittle starfish with a scooter blennie in his grasp. ok, crap. gotta get him out. do it in the morning. next morning. my mandarin "rico" is gone. needless to say the brittle has been moved to the pred tank. yes, a large brittle will eat your fish. :-[

 

oh tajhombre... that really sucks. Glad you got him out before anyone else was gotten tho

 

Yes they do, it's a learned behavior.

There is a video of green serpent arched up just waiting for a fish to swim under between the arms and then bam. A small reef fish sleeping or entangled in the arms of a large one does not stand a chance.

 

Wow I had no idea that they were predators I used to have one in my tank with body the size of my palm thing was huge. It would freak me out when i was moving stuff around in the tank and he would come out arms all going crazy.

 

As Corailline stated, it's a learned behavior.

Anything can become opportunistic if it gets hungry enough, and your star probably won't last very long if you don't target-feed it large chunks of meaty food every 2 - 3 days.

 

I've had an 18" green brittle star in my tank for 4 months now with no losses. I have smallish fish too. Stories like this are why I posted him for sale and someone is picking him up tomorrow. Hope he doesn't decide to go out with a bang and take his first fish in the next 24 hours!

 

It's not difficult to prevent- Have any frozen cocktail shrimp? Thaw and peel one and offer it to him on a feeding stick. Problem solved. As already mentioned, it's a learned behavior. Anything can become opportunistic if it gets hungry enough.

 

18" brittle star - wow....that would freak me out just looking at it!! Sounds like a good move. I'm sorry for the op's fish - such nice fish too. At least you discovered the culprit before everyting went missing. I wasn't aware that they were such predators either. Used to have a couple in years before in my FO....

 

Yeah, I fed him cocktail shrimp every other day until his center disc was bulging. He was super easy to catch when I sold him. Put some shrimp in the net and he came out of the rock and was crawling on the net trying to get to the shrimp and I lifted him enough to grab onto.
He was awesome looking but I still have a Tiger striped serpent seastar that's almost as big. He doesn't get nearly as worked up at feeding time though