I made yet another newbie mistake in that i bought a green brittle star fish a couple of months ago because the guy told me it was reef safe. Yesterday i noticed his head looked like a fish, like he swallowed a fish whole!!!!! He is huge, i would say his legs are like 9 inches a piece. He definately ate my mandarin , now the question is, did my mandarin who i have had for about a year, and actually ate food i fed!!!!! not just reef pods, did he just die and the star fish ate the body? i dont think so , the more i read about this star fish, the more i find out that he is a fish hunter. damnit..lol..another newbie mistake that im dealing with 2 years after starting the hobby. It seems alot of these mistakes take awhile to start causing problems.lol..i wish this dumb star fish would eat my damsels..but i think they are two quick for him. he should be easy to get out of the tank though. I should yell at the guy at the fish store for telling me the star fish was reef safe..
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I think i found my fish killer in my tank
- Thread starter jtravapd
- Start date
Sorry to hear about your losses but green brittle stars do have that tendency.
Technically they are "reef safe" because they don't eat corals, just fish they can catch at night.
Best to remove it you want rock perching or slow moving fish like mandarins.
Technically they are "reef safe" because they don't eat corals, just fish they can catch at night.
Best to remove it you want rock perching or slow moving fish like mandarins.
Ophiarachna incrassata
Hmmm - maybe we should sticky that somewhere for new folks to realize not to purchase them. I've not heard of any sponsors selling them - though I could be mistaken.
I'd imagine if it is big enough to eat a mandarin -then it's decent sized - and I'd imagine you don't feed it do you? With any larger sized serpent star - i personally like to give it food - whether it's a couple of those sinking pellets or a meaty chunk of silverside. That's just me though.
Hmmm - maybe we should sticky that somewhere for new folks to realize not to purchase them. I've not heard of any sponsors selling them - though I could be mistaken.
I'd imagine if it is big enough to eat a mandarin -then it's decent sized - and I'd imagine you don't feed it do you? With any larger sized serpent star - i personally like to give it food - whether it's a couple of those sinking pellets or a meaty chunk of silverside. That's just me though.
Toss him in the sump.
calaxa said:
i have a pair of harlequin shrimp but they dont go near that star fish or the other brittle star fish i have in the tank..they only eat the ones i feed them. the madarin was the pschedelic one and he was eating when i bought him from the pet store. so i dont know how ..he was huge..well looked really big compared to ones i have seen..i dont know how old he was , either way hes dead now...i want to get another one, i actually wanted to get two , but wasn't sure if two would get along...i have over 300lbs live rock in my tank and its running about two years so i think it could support two of them, do they fight if you have more then one?
as far as the harlequins go, even if they would go near this green monster.... my money would be on the star