Brittle stars are the best, serpent stars like to eat your
fish.

Wayne Sallee
Wayne's Pets



Tidepool Geek wrote on 5/23/2006 5:13 PM:
Hi Pat,

Let's start with the bottom line - Sea Stars are generally not a good
idea for a home aquarium. There are exceptions and the Blue Linkia may
be one of them but even this guy can be a bit tricky. [Serpent and
Brittle stars are a different case and are often a good addition.]

The problems with keeping stars have to do with diet and water quality.
Dietwise stars tend to come in two types; General predators that will
eat a wide variety of stuff that probably includes things that you
don't want eaten and highly specialized eaters that will only take a
very narrow diet (Murphy's Law dictates that this will be something
that is very hard to provide). Another diet issue is that there just
hasn't been very much research done on tropical stars' diets and we
often don't really know what the animal normally eats in the wild. With
respect to water quality it is important to realize that stars use
water for just about everything and are often extremely sensitive to
changes in salinity or other ionic balance issues. Even with a star
that may be otherwise suited to a home aquarium it's absolutely
necessary to acclimate it very slowly and carefully.

In terms of your Linkia here are a couple of things to think about: In
human terms, stars have a very slow metabolism and can take literally
months to starve. Stars that I've seen that were starving (long story)
seem to deflate but I don't know about Linkia - if its skin is fairly
rigid this 'deflation' may not be evident. Further, a well fed star is
about as inactive an animal as you can imagine - one of our local cold
water stars, Pisaster ochraceus, will eat a small mussel and then not
move for a week or more. I wouldn't take inactivity as necessarily
being a sign of ill health. Likewise, having stuff hanging from the
center of the animal could have a number of benign explanations (could
be feces).

If your star is dead or dying due to shipping stress or transfer shock
(insufficient acclimation time) the first signs could be the appearance
of lesions or indications that something has been munching on it. A
healthy star is usually pretty well defended against parasites or
micro-predators so if something has been attacking it, that's a good
indication that it's not long for this world. It would also be a good
idea to observe what goes on after lights out with a red flashlight or
something similar; a lot of micro-predators only come out at night.
Another thing to watch for is the appearance of "stuff" growing on the
star's skin - that's another indication that its natural defenses have
been compromised. Finally, use your nose; if the star dies your nose
knows - or will pretty quickly!

There are several good articles on sea stars and other echinoderms at
this website:
http://www.ronshimek.com/Online%20Articles%201.htm

With this one being the most 'on-point' for your situation:
http://www.reefkeeping.com/issues/2004-12/rs/index.php

Mortally yours,

Alex