Touching Tank

Hello, i will be starting a touching tank. I will only put inverts and other things you can touch in the tank. I am planning on putting mostly just starfish in my tank.... my favorite starfish is a chocolate chip starfish... i want to have many variaties of starfish but i want to include chocolate chip starfish but i found out that only some starfish can be with eachother and i found out that the chocolate chip starfish will eat other starfish and will eat coral. cause i was planning on putting corel inside too. i also found out that starfish will eat corel and that different starfish need different type of food that will come expensive. so i am thinking of not getting corel and just get live rock that has purple coraline algea on it. does anybody have advice if i should get starfish or not? or just keep corel and have a reef.;D :

 

I wouldn't put coral in a tank that people are going to be sticking their hands in so if you want a touch tank, skip the coral altogether and go with the starfish. I've never heard of choc. chip starfish eating other starfish though so I don't know where you got that information from?

 

so should i just keep starfish and live rock?
well i was reading about chocolate chip starfish and it said they eat other starfish and coral.

 

I think your idea of a touching tank is kind of cool! That being said however, I don't think it is the safest for your living animals in your tank.
By putting your hands in the tank you run the risk of adding pollutants into the water, stressing your fish out and possibly getting infections yourself if you have a cut etc.
If the tank wer much bigger, the chnaces of pollutants entering your water column would not be as prevalent and the pollutants would be dilluted somewhat as is the case with many other variables(ie. salinity and temperature variations). That is one major reason why people get as big of a tank as they can to lessen the implications caused by human error especially!
If you do decide to continue to pursue this "touch" tank, make sure your skimmer is working adequately, better yet, wear gloves when placing your hands in your tank.
Also, make sure that if you get Sea Stars, you DO NOT remove them from the water...you run the risk of killing them if you do!
Best of luck with whatever tank you decide on!

 

Hands are very dirty

HI,
If we wash our hands they will have traces of soap, if we don't human oils humans are very greasy skinned by nature.and anything they have touched will be depositied in the water system our hands are magnets for dirt.
Most of the large marineland system probably have huge resivors of water to dilute any contamination, maybe even some constant water exchanges with agressive mechanical filtration .
Most humans either smoke, eat, handle things that are dirty .
well you see where this is going.
I used to smoke , and one time I touched a tree frog while cleaning a tank it died from nicotine poisioning the traces of nicotine on my skin was lethal to that species.
Most soaps are very toxic.
Not sure how to get around this problem.
Doug
psps I don't smoke anymore.

 

I guess you can keep simple stuff like stars and maybe even horseshoe crabs. When i went to the Ripley's aquarium in Tennessee they had a touching tank with horseshoe crabs, pretty neat.

 

thnks for the comments.... i was thinking and i thought of just having a tank full of star fish (i will not let pplz touch them!just me!) since i can't put coral with my starfish i am probably ganna buy alot of live rock with coraline algea on it. what else would make it look nice and yet help the tank.

 

Macroalgae, a couple fish(small) like Chromis', Blenny or Goby. There are other nice Sea Stars that you could get to be able to keep corals. Try a Britttle or Serpent Star! Then you could also house crabs and shrimp(ornamental)!

 

yuck brittle and serpents scare me

 

How about skipping the Sea Stars and going with one of the many other interesting inverts to add some color and enjoyment?