Pest Sea Stars Asterina Sp

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stanleo

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So I finally got annoyed enough to look up these little starfish. I liked them for a long time but they are starting to annoy me. I don't have the ones that eat corals so I am thinking they are somewhat beneficial?
 
I read there are 2 ways to get rid of them and both have their down sides and would like to know what everyone else has done to get rid of them.
 
One way is manual removal. Upside you don't add anything to the tank. Downside is its hard work and you can't get them all.
 
The second way is to use harlequin shrimp. Upside they are beautiful shrimp, its easy to just let them do the job, and I have a real excuse to spend MORE money on the tank! J/K about that last one.
The downsides are that this shrimp will only eat echinoderms like sea stars so after they are done with the existing population I will have to get more or they will starve. Another downside is I did read one article that says the adult shrimp will eat urchins.
 
Can they really eat my pincushion urchin even though the urchin is 2.5 inches in diameter?
 
Do you really need a mated pair? One would take longer to consume the starfish and last longer in the tank.
 
What do I do when the shrimp runs out of food?
 
 
 
The non coral eating ones eat algae so are beneficial.
I just pick them out with long tweezers when I see them to keep the numbers down.
Can't help you with the shrimp but my same feeling applies to freshies too, don't buy a fish/ shrimp to do a job unless you really like it & can sustain it once it's done it's job
 
What specific problems are the Asterinas causing? If it is that they are plentiful little specs all over the rocks and/or glass, that's because there is plentiful food for them.
 
Generally it's a bad idea to use an animal for complete elimination of something when there is no backup method to feed it when its food supply becomes too low or non-existent. Often animals will start to get desperate before the food source is actually 100% gone and either die or do something weird (i.e. attacking/eating a normally safe tankmate). Rehoming the animals before that happens doesn't solve the problem if the root cause wasn't addressed. Sea hares and hair algae are a good example in that regard even though they can be kept on dried seaweed, since for some reason there is a pervasive myth in the hobby that it's impossible. So, many people get a sea hare for a while, give it away when they worry about it starving, and then have the hair algae come right back. Actual long-term regulation or elimination of the nuisance item requires an alternative food source long-term for the animal controlling it.
 
If using Harlequin shrimp to regulate Asterina populations, you'd want a sizeable supply of Asterinas in a second tank to keep the display population in check while avoiding starvation. The common alternative of using larger stars as food is rather questionable given the already poor shipping and such survival rates of those stars and how many stars per unit time are needed. I've never heard of Harlequins being fed urchins, but I've read complaints of them attacking urchins in the absence of stars, so it would be a risk. Those shrimp will kill rather large starfish, so I doubt an urchin's size would make much difference to the treatment a Harlequin shrimp would inflict if it became interested, which would be repeatedly ripping off the tube feet until the animal eventually dies.
 
As an alternative to toss out if you really want rid of the stars: I have a feeling that many medium to larger hermit crabs like Asterina, since, despite plentiful food for the Asterinas, I've never been able to sustain their populations in tanks with certain hermit crab species, such as various Calcinus and some of the medium to larger Clibanarius. When Asterinas end up in those tanks, they always seem to go missing in fairly short order (ditto for Stomatella), whereas they thrive in tanks with only smaller species. 
 

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