awww, here we go, another pest i am embracing... geese, does it even end. I
guess when your a natural breeder like me, then any life in the tank that
shows up is wonderful and grand.. they were apparent hitchikers from lfs on
a rock i had suspected, and there is total about 20-30 of them. never had
an explosion problem.

one thing you guys are missing, is when you pull these species out, you are
upsetting a balance that you yourself correct later by selected algae
removals or something.
But what i am apaprently doing is letting the tank dictate what kind of
explosion it needs, this has been going on for years. about 5 years ago it
had a small(about 1/16th inch) snail explosion(thousands), and when they did
their job after about a year or two, they started dying off naturally, and
now theres only a hundred or so left, which means i can barely ever find ONE
if i look hard enough.

then one time i had a GHA explosion, and after battling with it for months,
i gave up, and had faith that the tank was in a good enough state to combat
it, because of all the hard work of nurturing these biological successive
explosions, all of which was building a biological ecosystem. so, when i
let the GHA get outta control, it took over the whole tank, like the snails
at one time, and then it started to get these gel webs forming around them,
and worms started breeding by teh thousands in various area, and from teh
inside out, from teh roots up, the worms ate away the gha all up and the
tank was then endowed with a gha killer program, along with its snail killer
system, its cyano killer system, and then the worms churned up the substrate
liko no other and created the ultimate anerobic system, so then i had a tank
from top to bottom that had superb substrate, all the way to thousands of
algae killers ready to spawn at a moments notice, etc... it was a beautiful
story, that took years to unfold. Natural Biological Control. So, these
Asternias are a part of the tank history, they are staying thats for sure!!!
hehe. ok, if they get out of hand, ibviously the next step for me would be
to introduce a predator, because these reactions are growing bigger than an
aquarium can handle without the proper predators introduced. my point being
is we cant exactly expect an emerald crab to spawn from fish juice. my tank
has hit its limit on the big scale, its up to me to place the proper
predators in the tank. The small scale ractions however, my tank has an
uncanny ability to respond in different ways to many problems. i even had a
killer algae(caulerpa, taxifolia?) problem, and the system combatted that
too. right now theres only about 33% coralline coverage, some rocks
completely covered thick in purple, most others in hto pinkish, some new
thin light pink.

Anyway, the primary difference between the way i do ti above, and most
people do it is this. most people buy expensive pieces, so they need to
hack off all other dangerous life in their tank, i could never do that.
instead, i let that other life, that others call dangerous, or weeds, or
pests, and i use them as they were intended, etc..... Its kind of a fun
approach to reefing, and definetely is the easiest poor mans way to reef.

:-)


"wxtbs" wrote in message
oups.com...
If you dont have any natural predators in your tank the population of
those mutant starfish will keep growing. I had some in my 92 and at
one point I was picking out 60-70 (my daughter enjoyed keeping count)
of them at least once a week. They killed a beautifully colored pipe
organ colony I had so they do harm to corals.
I couldnt keep up with them so I finally got a harlequen (sp) shrimp
that cleaned them out.

Ken


Roy wrote:
I like those asternia stars. I have a bunch of them....The local lfs
here removes em all and flushes them......The other LFS goes to the
extremes of usiing a harequinn shrimp he places from tank to tank to
erradicate them. Some say they eat coral, others say they eat
coraline......but I have yet to see any damages from them. Same thing
with bristle worms.......folks generally find them repulsive in looks
so they have to be bad, so they get pulled and flushed.

Just like Pszemol stated, they reproduce by fission. I have a few
that are perfect with 6 legs, but most are bits and pieces.... and
they all do just fine. They are a common hitch hiker.

On Wed, 8 Mar 2006 17:53:44 -0600, "Pszemol"
wrote:
"wolf" " wrote in message
news i have homer simpson starfish in my tank. looks like nuclear
radiation
inflicted starfish. some have 3 legs, some 4, some5, some 6, some
7, some
maybe more, or less. one is in half, and ive been watching him grow
for
years, hes now bigger than a pencil eraser, hehe. some are about
2/3rds of
a starfish, wierd. i hvaent seen any more micro starfish, i think
they
came from a big spawn that was on a live rock when purchased, any
ideas on
this? will they spawn again?

You are talking probably about Asterina spp.
Starfish like these reproduce by fission.
After dividing they regrow missing parts...
If you look closely at your 1-2 legged ones
you should notice very small leggs growing in
the place where you think there is missing one.

http://www.dafni.com/echinodermata/A_wega.jpg
http://www.dafni.com/echinodermata/Asteroidea%202.htm

I have them in my tank - some people think they eat
corals, but the ones I have in the tank are harmless.

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