Asterina Star fish

[108reefer]

Ok, need some help here, I have some little asterina starfish eating my green slimer!!! I have a mystery wrasse in there that likes shrimp - what can I do!!!

[Jedidad]

i,ve seen pics of linkia stars eating asternias but i don't know how well they would take care of the problem. i would recommend pulling them out as you can catch them since you can't keep a harlequin shrimp with the mystery wrasse. good luck. i bought a harlequin for mine and it is working great.

[Pylos]

That is a conundrum. Linkia's imho will not deal with the problem adequately, mine has only eaten them opportunistically. Is your mystery large? Will it go after a harly if it is a very big shrimp? As a rule harlequin's are pretty reclusive, and usually will tuck themselves away. Mine did when it came to defending itself from my extra large and extra vicious six line.

Good luck!

[108reefer]

yeah, he is about 2 1/2 to 3" - and, My fourline ate the first shrimp, then the mystery ate him! I tried a cleaner shrimp again - just to see if the mystery would take it - lasted about 2 days... He's out of there, as soon as I find a buyer!

[aleonn]

The asterina starfish multiply pretty quickly, so I'd get them out now while their populations are relatively small. I manually took them out, and used a syringe (you can also use a needle or similar pointy object) to impale and remove them from tougher spots.

[ludiNano]

Good luck my last tank had them bad. It was a 30g and I let it go for a while being told some varieties were ok. When I decided to start removing them it was 30-50 a day for 2 weeks. It was ridiculous each day I thought I had got most of them. It was easier to manual remove them with a BB tank.

[Fish4Me2]

I agree with others that you should remove them when you see them. I've siphoned out more than 300 from my 60g in the last four days. I wish I had worked harder at removing them earlier, rather than thinking, 'how bad could it get?'

[B-Willz]

I syphon mine as well. If you want to syphon for long periods, I run a hose to a filter sock in the sump ti catch the stars. I atach a small peice of ridged tube about 2" long to the syphon hose so I can pick them off the rock and suck them up. I have been able to syphon for hours without worring about buckets.

[Edward Ducharme]

I recently noticed an explosion in my asterina population, I started moving them into my sump until my new fuge is ready. I plan on adding a harlequin shrimp to my new fuge and using the asterina to feed it in between chocolate star leg recoveries