Sand Sifting Star lost a limb....

Hello all. I have had a sand sifting sea star in my tank for going on 2 years now and have never had any problems from him. Every once in a while he'll come out from the sand and climb on the glass. He did this Sunday night but had actually got one of his legs caught in a power head. (We had taken the filter off to clean it) It completely chopped off half of his leg and I thought he was dead b/c his other legs were all curled up around his body. I felt absolutley horrible that I let this happen to my star fish so I let him be for a few minutes until I could bare to take him out. Later on I had noticed that he moved down the glass and was actually still alive, and now he is actually back down in the sand as he usually is. Now I have heard that star fish will grow their legs back if they lose one, Is this also true for the sand sifting star?

 

Yes they will grow them back. My coral banded shrimp lost a claw and he grew it back about a week later. Your star will probably hide for a little while.

 

For what its worth ??? You are not supposed to use digging animals in a DSB its eating what you don't already have enough of..

 

Am pretty sure I read once, that a starfish can regenerate itself from a single leg. :-/

You may wind up having two eventurally.

 

Mine started falling apart on it's own. Calfo told me they favor huge tanks to thrive.

 

Time to get a Harlequin...It will take of rest for you.

Harlequin Shrimp​

 

As long as the disk itself didn't get harmed it will regenerate. I had one that fell apart a long time ago, when I first set my tank up and then it eventually died. Mine died from bad water quality. You won't have two of them since the disk didn't get split, but it would have died from that, IMO...