What's up with my sea star...and more (pictures inside)

[Octoberfest]

So this morning I get up and take a look around the tank and notice my Blue Sea Star is all jacked up. It looks as though his leg was almost taken off, but by what I have no idea what so ever. I know that last night he was hangning out inside the Coralife125 Super Skimmer return bucket (the square piece that the water comes out from in the skimmer). Anyway, the only thing I have in my tank that shows any aggresion is the coral banded shrimp but I don't think it's near big enough to do this kind of damage not to mention it was "shedding" last night. The Sea Star is still moving around the tank like normal, just doesn't look right as you can see in the pictures.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v177/busa413/Picture655.jpg


Next up on the question list is this sponge. Is there anyway to get rid of it? I hate the way it looks, or is it beneficial at all?

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v177/busa413/Picture656.jpg

Third question, what type of algae is this growing on my power head and why is this the only spot in the tank it is growing? P.S. you can see one of those little star fish that I have no idea where they came from in the background.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v177/busa413/Picture657.jpg

Last question. What is this white stuff growing on my protein skimmer pump? I clean it off and within a week, it comes back?

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v177/busa413/Picture659.jpg

Thanks for the help

JOsh

[Octoberfest]

For some reason my picture taking skills make my tank look like poop.

[Brandon's Reef]

Im not sure about the seastar but the sponge if it even is helps by filter feeding you tank (I took mine out so I cant tell you not to take out yours) the algea on the pump looks like some sort of coraline to me, and the stars wont harm anything they are just little hitch hikers, your pump just looks dusty mine gets like that sometimes.

[Brandon's Reef]

you can just rub this off of your coralifes pump. It should come right off

[Octoberfest]

yeah the dust stuff comes right off, just annoying is all.

[Gobie]

That is a difficult starfish to keep.

[Brandon's Reef]

The Blue Linkia?

[AllenFord_SC]

Yes, very poor shipper and bad survival rate.

[Gobie]

Do you see anything like this?
http://www.tabula-international.com/UW/UH/BA2/Crys2.htm


http://www.uwphoto.net/pages/print_png-0262a.html

[Gobie]

How did you acclimate it?
If it has parasitic snails leave them on the starfish you will cause damage trying to remove them. A starfish can live fine with them. It’s just better to not have them.

[Octoberfest]

When I was setting up my tank initially a couple months ago I bought all my live stock, rock, some substrate, water etc etc from a very established tank. I new right off the bat that some things weren't going to do so hot in the move, but the LFS wouldn't take certain things, why I still don't know. The Blue Sea Star was one of them. Anyway, I continued on hoping for the best. Almost four months later and the tank is going great, tons of live, pods, dusters, worms (good ones) etc. Now these new tiny white star fish showing up, but that's a different story. Anyway, I drip acclimated this one for a while. I don't see any snails on it at all, nothing else wrong with it that I can see except the one damaged spot and like I said it happened overnight. I was looking at the tank right before bed and first thing this morning I saw this on the star.

Here are some more pictures if it helps, giving a different angle.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v177/busa413/Picture671.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v177/busa413/Picture673.jpg

and the underside just in case.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v177/busa413/Picture665.jpg

[NCreefwannabe]

has any rocks moved? Like maybe something fell on that leg??? Looks as if it got torn somehow. The dust is probably sand dust settling on the powehead.

[Pandora]

Uh-oh, that linkia is not looking good at all. I can just tell you that that's the way it starts when they die, and usually when they get to this point, there's little you can do to help them. They are very sensitive animals from my experience (had 2 as pets, also kept numerous ones for my harlequin shrimp's diet, also took care of them for the LFS), and when water quality is quite good for other animals in the tank, they can still inexplicably have problems. I can't say for sure what the one factor is, it may be that they get infections easily when there's some parameter that's not to their liking or due to stress.. but I can just say I've seen few recover when they pass that point.

[Octoberfest]

so what do i do now?

[Blown 346]

The asterina starfish are great scavengers to have, they will help stir up the sand bed and help keep it clean.
The starfish, the only you can do is kep the water conditions to as close to perfect as possible, maybe feed the starfish some small meaty foods. Justhope for the best.

[piscivorous]

I thought Linkias were supposed to be one of the easier reef safe starfish to keep??

[NCreefwannabe]

not the blue linkia. They are one of the harder.

[cato]

Looks like something cut the stars leg. Check for shifting rock. Looks like burgandy colored coralline on the powerhead and yep, dust on the other one. Not sure about the sponge (if that's what it is).

[Octoberfest]

well it's been a little over a week and the sea star is doing much better. The "wound or spot or whatever" is actually getting much smaller, healing up. It has also become much more active.

Here are some updated pictures. It might be hard to tell how much better it has gotten, but you can tell when you are able to see it in person.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v177/busa413/Picture693.jpg

[Pandora]

foresternon, that's awesome to hear! Honestly, I would have bet he was a goner, but he proved me wrong... it must have been more due to direct trauma than stress and secondary infection.

[Octoberfest]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=6778217#post6778217 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by Pandora
foresternon, that's awesome to hear! Honestly, I would have bet he was a goner, but he proved me wrong... it must have been more due to direct trauma than stress and secondary infection.

Yeah fortunatly he's proving you and my gut feeling wrong, I thought for sure he was done.

One thing that I'm wondering about is that I found out I have a Polyclad Flatworm...a large one at that in my tank. Is it possible that little bast$#d did this? I'm working on getting it out of my tank, but I've only seen it once and can't find it.

[jacksonsmom25]

I hope it keeps doing well, I think its very beautiful. Best of luck