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View Full Version : Sand sifting Sea Star, any good for sand bed?


ronkhoo
03/12/2007, 03:31 PM
Hi fellow reefers,

I brought a Astropecten polyacanthus home last week to help my DBS.

Once in my tank, burrow into the sand very quickly. I though it will walk on the sand just like my 6-year-old cumber did. A sinking feeling tells me it is hunting for my pod s and worms ;O

My sandbed averages about 3.5 inch deep on a 36"x18" foot print. the tank is about 10 years old.

Do you have one of those? How you like them? Should I take it out?

All comment sare welcomed.

Travis L. Stevens
03/12/2007, 03:32 PM
Actually, the Sand Sifter Star does eat the microfauna in your sandbed. They are a double edged knife. On one side, they do help keep things in suspension by moving the sand, but then they eat the things that would normally eat what is being stirred. I personally think that these animals are better left in the wild.

bph0013
03/12/2007, 04:17 PM
I second that statement. They'll feed on your beneficial microfauna and starve after they eat everything. Really, imo, they are not advantageous over cucs or other sandstirrers that are detrivores.

AZDesertRat
03/12/2007, 04:24 PM
Your DSB will stand for Dead Sand Bed in very short order. I rank adding a Sand Sifting Star as my number 1 stupidest mistake I have ever made in my 17 years in the reef hobby. It wiped out my 100G DSB in a matter of two months and it took over 6 months of adding cups of donated live sandand bottles of ocean pods to get it back anywhere near where it was originally.

dippin61
03/12/2007, 04:41 PM
Sad to see i answer this many times a day, so i apologize for just copy and pasting from another thread that i responded to. but here goes.



Part of the problem with SS stars, are they are NOT scavengers. They dont scavenge, and they dont eat detritus.

They are PREDATORS. Meaning they hunt for their food. And generally they are not eating pods. They are eating the micro/macro fauna/infauna of your sand bed. The spaghetti worms, small animals less the 50 microns in size.

They hunt and eat all day long, every day. So you can imagine the damage he can do to a sandbed in a relatively short amount of time. And the less sand you have, the easier it is for them to reach everywhere in the sand, not giving your fauna the proper amount of time to reproduce.

They generally wont target feed either, because

1. They dont like dead food.
2. The food you are trying to feed them, is generally too big, and not their normal food.

SS stars mostly wont eat shrimp etc etc.. they just dont want them.

So what your gonna see is, that after months, and months, and months, and even close to a year, they will start to starve and die. A SS star, can deplete the life of a 75g 5 inch sand bed in as little as 6-8 weeks. After that, all you have is just sand, no fauna, and a dying star.

SS stars are not meant for this hobby IMO. They should be left in the ocean, or put into huge tanks of 200g or more, with at least 6-8" of sand bed, being recharged every few months, for continued HEALTHY existence of the animal.

And if you ever see a SS star not in the sand, and on the glass, he is starving. It means he is looking for food, and cant find it.