help with star fish?

i have whitish star fish looking thngs on my glass they are about half the size of a dime and smaller

i have been taking them out because someone told me they were bad

was wondering tonight if they were bad

any advice on this would be appricated;D

 

Can you post any pictures? There are many types of micro-stars, some bad, some good.

 

Sounds like asterinas to me. For the most part they are fine and harmless. I have them by the thousands in my systems and never had any problems.

 

I had a bad experience with them. Mine were actually the bad one, at least they were always on my zoos and greenstar polyps, and they were dying off(the corals). So i apperently had the "rare" evil ones. So i bought a beutiful harlequin shrimp, aclimated him, and droped him into the tank. He rapidly whent to a cave and was hiding. And as i was looking for him, he darted out of the rock onto an asterina star that was on the front glass, and started eating it. Moral of the story is that, i will never trust asterinas.

 

i think no broblem with tise kind of star it act like cleaner in the tank

 

I agree, but not all are good, as long as you keep a good eye on them, and they dont go for your polyps, or your coraline starts to deminish, then it could be that you have the nice and freindly asterina stars.

 

er a little like this maybe

Hi
If it looks like this it maybe a micro star they are pretty good cleaner.

 

no they look more lile a star that points dont come far offthe body
that pic looks like an octupus (not really) but long legs
mine are like small throwing stars
ill try to get a pic tonight
thanks

 

Bad ones are usually more non-symetrical than all of the other ones.

Bad ones



USUALLY good ones




Remember, they are always labeled as Asterina spp. That means anything in the Asterina Genus and there's lots of them. Most of them are good but not all. As a result, it's hard to make broad statements about the genus itself.

 

very well put Inwall!! The easiest way for me to remember the good from the bad, is the good have 6 legs and the bad have 7!! I have one of the 6 leg guys and it is a very good algea eater, but ive never had any problems with it eating coral....