Starfish? I Didnt Put These In Here!

[slowleak]

i have these starfish looking things starting to grow bigger and bigger. i had a BAD nitrite spike from being out of town again, so i gave away my damsels and snails. the hermits stayed since i couldnt find them, and these darn starfish things have kept on growing this whole time! what the heck are these things? they started of less than an 8th of an inch big, and only 2 of them, now there is 7 of them and the biggest one is about a half an inch! i have no camera or else i would take some pics.

 

[-Nemo-]

Do they look something like this?
And have various numbers of legs which have various lengths?

If so, these are Astrea starfish. They don't get much bigger than 1/2 an inch and they propagate readily by "dropping" their legs which form into new starfish.

Most of these are harmless.

 

[Truck]

apart from them being coraline munchers

 

[bagu]

apart from them being coraline munchers

wow! i didn't know starfish were nasty

 

[seffieuk]

Iv'e got many in my tank, there are only a few types of these which are badies, most are fine in your tank - as for eating coraline, if they do they certainaly haven't caused a problem in my tank

Seffie x

 

[Anguilla82]

yeah i didn't realise they ate corraline? i thought they were sort of part of the clean up crew.
Thought it was urchins that ate corraline?

had hundreds and hundreds in my nano, harmless really!

 

[slowleak]

thats good to hear. they have various numbers of legs, and are more of a reddish pink color. i doubt theyre eating my coraline though, its still growing!

thanks for the help guys/gals