toadstool and asterina starfish blues

[butrya03]

a few months ago i had the opportunity to relocate a 120 gal. tank for a customer of a lfs i used to work at. the owner getting rid of the tank, to my surprise, was none other than mike mussina of the ny yankees. so for performing the move to the new owners house and doing a nice install, not only did i get paid pretty well, i also got a nice size finger leather and roughly dinner plate sized toadstool. i acclimated them as i have done with all my other livestock(temp., then drip for some time) and the finger leather has been doing pretty well. however the toadstool has been, from my observation, pretty poorly. its kinda limp and rarely has any of its polyps out. i have read that poor polyp extension isnt necessarily a sign of poor water quality, and i know leathers tend to take there time adjusting to a new environment, but i cant help but feel frustrated. it was moved once after i put it in my tank and now it has some polyps out, but i would only say about a quarter of them total. i dont know what else i can do.

now my second problem that has just recently developed over the last week or two. i have started noticing an increasing amount of the little asterina starfish all throughout my tank. at first i thought very little about them, but now that there are so many, ive noticed my coraline algae is slowly being consumed. i thought about manually removing them, but after i took 40 or so out, i realised i was wasting my time, because the next day it seemed like there were just as many if not more. other than harlequin shrimp, is there any other fish/inverts that can remove these pests safely? i dont want to loose any more of that beautiful coraline algae.

any help on either of these two problems would be greatly appreciated.

-ryan

[snorvich]

Asterina starfish are easy. Get a Harlequin shrimp. Takes a while but all will be gone. You can then sell him, give him back, or maintain him with purchased starfish. These are COOL shrimp.

[butrya03]

i think they are an awesome shrimp and thats the dilema, i wont want to get rid of it! i dont want it to starve to death either. i wonder if i would have enough of those damn things in there to keep one. there everywhere i look.
-ryan

[MarkusII]

Hello,

but if you keep other starfish - like Archaster angulatus etc. the shrimps are not the best solution;):sad2:.

You might use this "bio-mechanical" tool for removal of those sitting on the glas every morning:

Star-catcher in action (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cXSsEa5jgvY)

here you can see some pictures of the tool - unfortunately it is in German...
http://www.meerwasserforum.com/thre...?threadid=43129

http://www.aquadriver-shop.de/shop/...at=&start=0&nr=

regards

Markus

[butrya03]

i dont keep any other starfish in the tank, so the shrimp would probably work, but i dont want it to run out of food. all though i noticed today that some of those asterina starfish are getting to have 3/4-1 inch leg spans, and are really starting to destroy my coraline algae.
i would try that star- catcher but very few are ever on the glass. mainly on the rock gorging themselves on coraline algae.

[austin93]

I just picked out a bunch every couple days, first thing in the morning. After a couple weeks they were gone. It was kind of fun trying to find the little things, they are very sneaky.

[TheMcs]

I used to use a needle to get them out, easier than trying to pick the little things up. Then I got a harlequin. Loved it. Got rid of them all. Once done I gave it to a friend with asterinas. He cleared his tank and brought it back to the store.

[butrya03]

thanks for all the input on the starfish, but does anyone have any idea with the toadstool? im about ready to get rid of it because it doesnt seem happy in my tank.

[Lightsluvr]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=14220918#post14220918 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by MarkusII


You might use this "bio-mechanical" tool for removal of those sitting on the glas every morning:

Markus

Unfortunately this tool won't help if the asterinas have migrated to your live rock, as in my case. They were clearly attacking zoanthid colonies in my tank.

I just placed a pair of harlequin shrimp on the live rock to have a starfish dinner...

LL