- Location
- Forest Hills
harleys r great at radicating stars. just 1 will do the job. the problem is harleys will starve once all stars r gone, so they must be fed.
a good star or a bad star?
- Thread starter daisy
- Start date
Oh gosh, here we go again with this Asternia thread. They are reef safe. they do not bother zoanthids unless something is wrong with them. I collect all sorts of zoas and have these starfish since i started this hobby and my zoas are growing and not declining. Probably the one thing that you might want to worry about is that they eat coraline.
I find it funny that there are two opposite sides to this "do they don't they" eat zoas business.
When reality is there are so many different stars that one cannot possibly identify them all or possibly know exactly what their diet can consist of.
We had seen these stars on a zoanthid colony of ours. A very rapid growing colony.. they started to diminish, not all the zoas in tank, just those on that one rock. 3 seperate types of zoanthids. No distress was visible, tank parameters were in check. The ONLY change that occurred to stop them from disappearing in our tank was the addition of 2 harleys.
So the logical explanation in my mind, considering I have not changed a thing about my tank maintenance routine itself, is that the Harley's eliminating the stars is why my zoas are now again growing rapidly with zero decline.
Did the stars actually eat the zoas? I don't know for sure.. though they did have an effect on the zoanthids, either due to the stress of their presence alone or actually eating them.
When reality is there are so many different stars that one cannot possibly identify them all or possibly know exactly what their diet can consist of.
We had seen these stars on a zoanthid colony of ours. A very rapid growing colony.. they started to diminish, not all the zoas in tank, just those on that one rock. 3 seperate types of zoanthids. No distress was visible, tank parameters were in check. The ONLY change that occurred to stop them from disappearing in our tank was the addition of 2 harleys.
So the logical explanation in my mind, considering I have not changed a thing about my tank maintenance routine itself, is that the Harley's eliminating the stars is why my zoas are now again growing rapidly with zero decline.
Did the stars actually eat the zoas? I don't know for sure.. though they did have an effect on the zoanthids, either due to the stress of their presence alone or actually eating them.
i dont know the names but i have the lighter and darker ones.
- Location
- Overland Park, KS
OMG!!! So not only ~might~ they be the culprit behind all my zoas' disappearning, but they eat coraline????
These stars are HISTORY!!! My rock used to be TOTALLY PURPLE, RED AND ORANGE from coraline - it was OBVIOUS that the rock was OLD... and after the zoas were gone, my rocks began to look grey. I could not figure out why.
sigh.
hope the coraline comes back now that i'm taking action against the stars.
and Randy, I"ll be happy to bring you as many of these stars as you want! I hope they have a taste for orange and green
These stars are HISTORY!!! My rock used to be TOTALLY PURPLE, RED AND ORANGE from coraline - it was OBVIOUS that the rock was OLD... and after the zoas were gone, my rocks began to look grey. I could not figure out why.
sigh.
hope the coraline comes back now that i'm taking action against the stars.
and Randy, I"ll be happy to bring you as many of these stars as you want! I hope they have a taste for orange and green
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