Please Help Me

[luv*my*fishies]

I bought a purple horned starfish about a month ago... and had only had the tank for about two months previous to that. Welll... no one told me that i should change the filter in my tank every month, and my nitrates were way high. Long story short, my starfish (which i love) is dieing and i dont know how to help it. I have fixed the water, but it does not seem to be getting better... ne ideas? please help. all the guy at the local fish store could say was, " i would throw it away" and i just cant come to terms with that. please let me know. thanks!!!

 

[crazyelece]

starfish need very stable, well established tanks to survive long term. I'm afraid there is not much good news and your star is most likely doomed. About the only thing you could do (I am assuming the LFS won't take it if they told you to throw it away) is try to convince someone near you with a very established tank to try and keep it for you and bring it back. It will be hard though as a decaying star has the potential to wipe out a tank. I hate to say it but I think you may just have to chaulk it up as a newbie learning experience and try to learn from it so as to not make the same mistake in the future.

 

[Navarre]

Onec a starfish begins to die it deteriorates very rapidly and its usually far to o late to turn it around.
A starfish should not be kept in any system that is less than 12 months old as they need extremly stable conditions. (perhaps a sandsifter is hardier). Your starfish also sounds more like a hunter rather than a grazer so its ossible that its starved to death as they need coral polyps to sustainthemselves.

You mention changing filters each month? I dont advise this at all as this will damage the bacteria population in your system.
You really need to be using liverock as this is the best way to operate a marine tank. If you have to use a filter then you simply need to change the water regualr and when doing this, take the sponges and wash them in the water you are getting rid of. Then put these sponges back in the filter. this is the only way to reduce nitrates without the addition of liverock.

 

[luv*my*fishies]

Thanks you for all your help. i have taken the starfish out to ensure that it wont pollute the rest of the tank. As for the filter situation... i do have liverock in my tank..... but i also have one of the filters that hang over the side of the tank. You do not think i should be changing that.... just rinsing the insert out when i do water changes. I do changes about once a week to everyother week, in order to keep that nitrates down. Is this good.... like you allready know.. i am pretty knew to this and am just goig off of what one guy at the lfs said. let me know if i am doing something wrong. Thanks.

 

[SkiFletch]

Well yeah, rinsing it out in tankwater is what you should be doing if you're forced to use it. But what would be even better would be to take the filter inserts out of the HOB or canister filter (whichever you have), buy a small piece of LR, smash it with a hammer, and put the rubble in the filter. Nature is better at filtration than we are

 

[Navarre]

We havent discovered how much liverock is in this system. If you have enough then the rock will filter the tank all by itslef and sadly the shop got you to purchase this extra filter just to boost their profits a bit further

The mechanical filter will help polish the water but in essense it will only i ncrease your nitrates beyond what the liverock can deal with.

You can of course do as mentioned and crush some liverock (or even simply use some small bits of rubble from your lfs or when you next get some liverock) and put this in place of any filtration filters in your HOB. This will help greatly and give a good environment for pod populations.

 

[luv*my*fishies]

so, what you are all saying... is take the insert filter thing out of the filter and replace it with crushed up live rock? that would relaly help?..... ok.. well i guess i will try that and see how it goes. thanks so much for your help. hopefully my water will be stable sometime here soon.