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View Full Version : Baby Brittle Star (fancy) Found in LR HELP!!


irinki16
04/18/2006, 12:11 PM
hello. i am new to this hobby. i started about a little over a month ago. my tank is finally getting established, after many ongoing cycles. i have a 12G nano tank with 15lbs of live rock and about 1 1/2" deep of live sand. I also have a lemon damsel, 6 dwarf tiger hermit crabs and 6 astrea snails. I was watching my tank (in awe of how cool the hermit crabs eat algea and finding new corraline algae) when i saw this spiny looking thing. at first i thought it was a worm until i slightly moved the rock to find something that looked like a tiny starfish with 3 long arms and 2 really small arms. when i researched it up, it looked like a fancy brittle star. i also found out that brittle's can grow to be 10" long which is not good for my tank and my fish ( i also read that they were omnivores). is he going to grow to be that big in my tank? if so, should i get rid of him? if not, what should i be feeding him? he's smaller than my hermit crabs. i would say the brittle is less than half an inch long. is he a baby? how did he survive the cycle in the first place?

bertoni
04/18/2006, 12:22 PM
Without a picture, it's hard to say for sure, but it's likely that the animal is full-grown. They are good to have, if so, and will eat leftover food, etc. They seem to be fairly tough, so they often survive live rock curing.

just_in_time
04/18/2006, 12:24 PM
He won't get as big as the regular brittlestars. He will stay small and won't get much bigger than he is now. In the future you may find that you don't see them anymore because they are eaten by some fish.

a4twenty
04/18/2006, 04:09 PM
the baby brittle's that come as hitchhikers usually don't get bigger than your thumbnail and as stated above they are a good thing.