Want to get rid of your Asterina stars?

[Anonymous]

I'd like to set up a culture tank for Asterina sp. seastars. These are the little pinky nail sized guys that hitchhike on live rock. Some folks consider them a nuisance, and some folks just don't like the look of them. I'm trying to keep some harlequin shrimp in the near future, and hopefully I can keep them on these stars. They are quite prolific and reproduce asexually. Does anyone have experience culturing these, or want to get rid of a bunch?

I already have about a hundred or so, but I don't know how long that will keep a couple harlequins fed for.... :?

 

[Ben1]

I could pull some out of my tanks, dont know about a hundred but 20 or so if that would be any help at all. They are all over the place but I can't tell if they are harmful at all.

And I thought you found a way to get rid of them all with out hamring my otehr serpents. :?

 

[Anonymous]

Hymenocera sp. feed fairly infrequently so you shouldn't have too much problems with them depleting your Asterina spp. stock.

If I recall someone did do this, though I don't remember where I read it.
I'll check my references.

Regards,
David Mohr

 

[Anonymous]

I probably had over a hundred of them in a 65; a pair of harlequins burned through them all in a few weeks. I think that if you doled them out you could get more time out of it. Dunno how many stars you would have to have to keep ahead of the demand. Are you planning on slicing the stars to propagate?

After that I fed them one small choc chip star a month, which they pretty much consumed completely.

I always wanted to try feeding them frozen chunks of locally collected stars that are abundant. I wouldn't want to have to rely on tropically collected stars again.

 

[Anonymous]

So you changed your mind about the harlequins then? COOL! I love these little guys. 8) Great little nano residents.
Having kept them, I'm very curious to see if you can keep up with enough of those little stars Matt. For what it's worth, I let mine feed for a week, then took them off feed for a week, then back on, etc.

Jim

 

[Anonymous]

Thanks for the input guys. I'm thinking and hoping that I can keep up with their demand by getting a lot from folks around here who have them, and from folks on the net. I know our tank on campus has a boatload of them, so I'll start with those.

I'd rather NOT feed them any wild caught stars, just to see if it can be done.

I won't be getting them for a while, so I'll be sending some of you PMs when I do..

 

[Anonymous]

Hymenocera sp. feed fairly infrequently so you shouldn't have too much problems with them depleting your Asterina spp. stock.

If I recall someone did do this, though I don't remember where I read it.
I'll check my references.

Regards,
David Mohr

Mine ate almost constantly, that's why I ended up putting them on a week on, week off feeding regime.


Jim

 

[HClH2OFish]

Any possiblilty of setting up a small tank to raise the stars in where the harlequins can't eat em?
Just harvest em out every once in a while and drop in the display to make sure the population stays up.
Our LFS has tons of these guys...they haven't done anything detrimental so I don't *think* they'd do bad stuff to your tank...

And I think harlequins are cool too

 

[Anonymous]

That's kind of what I was planning...a refugium basically. Problem is there's no way I can create a refugium big enough to feed these guys for very long. It would need to be several hundred gallons I imagine.

 

[HClH2OFish]

*bleah* That doesn't sound too feasible then

 

[Anonymous]

Well, if I consider all the thousands of gallons of local reefer's tanks 'my star-breeding refugium', it is

 

[Anonymous]

Why dont' you just set up a small tank and keep a couple of chocolate chip stars Matt? You cut a piece of a leg off, feed it to your shrimp, and return the star to the tank and let it heal. You can even keep chocolate chip stars in a sump. Much easier and more practical than trying to propogate asterinids IMO.

Jim

 

[Anonymous]

Hmm, it's definitely a good idea, but I'd like to do it with Asterina stars all the same. I mean, for every CC star that's imported and makes it to a tank, I'm sure several die in the process. I'd like to see how easy it is using a star that's readily available as a hitchhiker and culturable. Worst case scenario we have some coldwater stars on campus I'm betting they would eat.

 

[Anonymous]

Do me a favor and chop one of those coldwater stars up into small chunks, freeze and test it.

 

[Anonymous]

You mean see if they eat it? OK. There's actually a large star common in CA tidepools that is in the genus, it's Asterina miniata IIRC. Commonly called orange bat star. I think I'll try one of those. Do you know what species are native out there Dan?

 

[Anonymous]

I think our common star is Asterias forbesi. It's such an abundant predator on clams that it's actually illegal to return one to the water once you take it out. Or was anyway; I think they have declined somewhat.

I'm just curious to see if they will accept that form of food, regardless of the species.

Hey, mine always did something interesting that I haven't seen documented. When they are first turning the starfish over one of them would repeatedly thrust a long pointy foreleg up into the underside of one of the star's leg. I never knew if it was injecting some paralytic or cutting hydraulic lines, but the star became docile after that...

 

[Anonymous]

That's good, I'd hate to see a hostile starfish 8O

 

[iphy]

I'm in the SF Bay Area, in Sunnyvale. If you have family or something and are in the area anyway, I'd be happy to let you have as many asterina as could easily fetch out of my tank. I don't consider them a nuisance at all, in fact I like them; but I have plenty and they have no problems reproducing.

 

[supergiantrobot]

I have a refugium and could keep asterinas on the "farm" there. Is anyone willing to ship me a bunch for a seed population? I am in NC.

 

[supergiantrobot]

Also, I should ask if asterinas are reef safe. It seems like there are differing opinions, with the tendency to say that the little starfish are harmless to corals. Opinions?

My reef tank has a sea cucumber, red hermits, a serpent star, and soft corals. Any potential victims among that population?