Starfish Torn to Pieces

[FSOL]

I was looking into my tank and what do I find? One of the arms of my sand star. So I figure maybe something happened and it lost one arm and it will grow back. After looking more carefully around the tank, I saw that it was just detiriorated into pieces.

What would cause this? Did it die, and was then eaten by fish or did fish kill it first? I could only find two arms of it, so I don't know where the rest of the body is and whether or not it's alive or not.

[dc]

When I had my Harlequin shrimp, I had several CCStarfish do that. I alway just figured some were a lot more suseptable to water changes than others.

[ophiuroid]

It was dying in all likelihood.

How long have you had it?

This disintegration is characteristic of both starvation, or acclimation problems. But it is very unlikely (unless you keep big wrasses, puffers, triggers, large nasty hermits) that it was an attack that caused this.

[FSOL]

it's been in the tank for about 2 months now. The tank is 180g., has a deep sandbed. There's one other star like it in the tank and two large cukes.
The only mean fish in the tank is a maroon clown that's about 4 inches long. It's got some screws loose and tries to topple small corals over when hungry or when things are rearranged.

[ophiuroid]

What is your specific gravity?

Have you done any recent water changes, or experienced any other major tank issues?

[FSOL]

SG is about 1.023. Recently had a fish die and rot in the tank, so nitrate went up to 10ppm. Had to do 10% water changes every day for about a week to get it to zero.

[ophiuroid]

The specific gravity is rather low, IMO for these stars. Ideally 1.025-1.026, and anything below 1.024 is pretty stressful. That could be part of the problem, and frequent water changes may also have been an issue. It is possible the star can recover, but "arms falling off" is pretty typical of osmotic shock or starvation. It is the timeframe that points more towards the osmotic issue.

Personally, I would stick to having one sand sifter star (in general I don't recommend any as they are more detrimental than good, IMO). They don't have a great survival rate and 2 are just competing for the same food.

[FSOL]

I always start w/ a sg of about 1.025 and as i drip kalkwasser into the tank and my evaporation isn't too high, the SG slowly goes down.
You're right though, 2 is one or two too many stars. I don't plan to buy any even if I lose both of these.

[Kgoarmy17]

I would say watch out for crabs, but you have a starfish already in there.

I had a gorilla crab kill a few starfish before I found him. :(