Marble Seastar

Ok, so I bought one of these last week because Scott (the LFS guy) told me that it would stay small and eat leftover food and detritus. I have a tendency to overfeed so anything that eats leftover food is a plus. Besides, he gave it to me for half price because he needed a guinea pig. They've never carried this species (fromia) before and wasn't real sure if it was completely reef safe or not.

Well, let me tell you I think I've fallen for this little guy. I put him in the 10 gallon on Friday. This is the tank that I left the pumps off for 10 hours, so I've been dealing with an algae bloom from the die off. Today, other than a small patch of GHA that is turning brown, there is very little algae in this tank. The little bugger eats slime algae as well as detritus and leftover food. I'm so happy, my tank is CLEAN as a whistle, you can even see the back glass and my sand (covered in diatoms last week) is clean. The best part, he goes right around the corals and doesn't bother them at all.

Here's more about them:

Marble Starfish (Fromia sp.)

There is a baby snowflake eel in this tank that will only eat food that is moving. It either has to be alive (thankfully the chaeto I have in there is loaded with baby mysis) or frozen and waving back and forth in front of his face. I have to feed him with a pill doser for a dog, and just put the cube of mysis in front of him and wiggle it. He grabs food off the cube but once it's in the water column he's uninterested. I got a spotted hawkfish to pick up the slack but even he doesn't get it all. The starfish, however, jumps right on it as soon as it settles on the sand. At least I know it won't starve.

There's a pic of him in the POTM thread so while you're posting YOUR pics check it out! It's a beautiful specimen and it keeps my tank clean.

 

FYI, these need to go in an established tank with lots of biodiversity. They like the microorganisms that live in the live rock. I'd hate to see someone order one and put it in a new tank and let it starve to death.

 

Nice looking star. My boy wants one of those. However, he must wait. I won't kill another pretty starfish out of ignorance again. I did that with a really nice blue linkia (see avatar).

 

Both Linkia and Fromia are quite intolerant of salinity changes so keep up with your top-off's and be careful when doing waterchanges.

 

I top off every day, less than a gallon, and we don't do no stinkin' water changes.

 

be careful with that snowflake, he may be small now but soon he will be eating 3-5 gold fish aday and anything else in the tank. this "little" guy is what ruined my first attempted reef tank. now I am scared to death about what i put in my tank.