Basket Star?

[mb]

Hi all,

I got this hitchiker from my LFS when I bought my gorgonian. I believe it's a juvenile basket star.

I have read a couple articles about it and they both say it's difficult to keep (for 'expert only').

I would like to hear some tips concerning this hitchiker: what's the water flow? light? PH, salinity, FOOD ?

 

[Anonymous]

Awesome hitchhiker!

They are rather difficult from what I recall. Someone (Maybe Rob Toonen?) wrote an article covering them for one of the online reef keeping magazines. The gist, they move to a spot in the current in twilight hours to feed on passing plankton after unfurling their arms.

That gorgonian looks like it has some necrotic areas or possibly some algal overgrowth by they way.

 

[mb]

I put some thawed bloodworm in its path. One of its hands grabbed the worm, then the whole arm is curled inward to its mouth. It likes brine shrimp too. It's cool to see, almost like the way sea apple eats. After 2 days in my tank, it now crawls all over my tank. It even wrapped itself around the Koralia powerhead. Luckily the pump was turned off. It even wraps around my Spaghetti leather (i think this coral is non-stinging). Here, it is spreading its arm straight out in the current, trying to catch something.

With the way it crawls around, now i cannot add stinging anomonie, powerheads for extra current, nippy fish. I guess i have to settle for gobies, blennies, or any peaceful tankmates.

Any suggestions of compatible tankmates?

Besides brine shrimps, any other types of food i could use (zooplankton, phytoplankton?)


Thanks

 

[Anonymous]

Wow, that is cool.

 

[camaroracer214]

i would feed a whole bunch of different foods for this guy.

frozen:
-brine (either spirulina enhanced or vitamin enriched or both)
-mysis
-cyclops/cyclpeeze
-rotifers

liquid:
-phyto (either live or dead, but probably prefer live)
-oyster eggs (comes in liquid and frozen forms i think)
-other zooplankton

i strongly recommend a widely varied diet. it will greatly help other fish/corals as well. these guys are notoriously difficult to keep as it is, so the more varied the diet the better.

 

[mb]

Thanks for the tips. I am thinking of making some dripping contraption (similiar to lime-water dripping bottle) to drip liquid food at night. Don't know if there's any (cheap) commercial product to do this.

 

[SnowManSnow]

careful.. seems like you're asking for a nutrient spike

b

 

[kgross]

I have to say WOW. That is one creature I would love to have.

On the feeding, be careful you can overfeed the tank pretty easily trying I would suggest doing a target feeding daily, if you can get it to eat this way....

What I would try is to turn off all the pumps and use a turkey baster to blow food in its arms. I would guess that since you are seeing it move around the tank all the time that it is searching for food, which might mean it is starving already so I would work quickly on getting it a good source of food without polluting the tank

If that does not work, I would suggest setting up feeding tank to move it into. A small tank with mild flow that you can put quite a bit of food into for it to capture, and then move it back to the main tank after it feeds. This way you can give it a lot of food, without ihe pollution problems. Just change the water in the feeding tank before each feeding event.

Kim

 

[mb]

Thanks for all the tips about food. I was target feeding it with thawed brine shrimp and blood worm, and it was eating them. I am not sure if they have much nutrition values in them.

The reason I was thinking of dripping liquid food because i read/heard that it eats all the time throughout the night (nocturnal). I thought by dripping a drop of liquid food once an hour it will have enough to eat. But I wouldn't know when it has enough either. I guess if it sticks its hands out then it's still hungry.

Kim, you are right about it being hungry. The LFS didnot know about its presence, then he wasn't feeding it.

The idea about a secondary tank for the purpose of feeding is very good. I might have to go that way to avoid fouling up the main tank.