tiny star possible menace

[beaux]

Ok, i asked an invert question about these guys the other day and got a few answers but was wanting some more info on them and i found that they are coral eaters but only a couple of them. Luckily ihave mostly zoas mushrooms and the like. I do have a couple of candycane types they do not touch and a few other stony type corals i never see them on. The article is VERY LONG! So ill save ya some reading if ya scroll down about 3/4 of the way down. Lucky for me i am not setup for hard corals or i would be crying by now, as there are enough of them in there to clean a tank out over night! When i said hundreds of them i meant thousands! LOL! Anyway just some usefull info thought id pass it along!
REEF AQUARIUM FARMING NEWS 26p 2
Mabe it will help someone!
Beaux

[tang daddy]

Didn't have time to read the thread you posted, I have about 4-500 starfish in my tank, they're mostly on the rock and glass eating algae, never seen them eat any of my stony corals. Although I have asterina stars.....which one are you referring to, can you post a name?

[beaux]

Will try to find it in the article for ya also the names of the only 2 corals it would eat. I have a few in my tank and they go all over everything but i have never seen any dammage on any of my corals even the few stony ones i have.

[O.C.D Fishies]

We have a whole crap load of them too but ours are the purple ones. Are yours the beige colored ones?? I have heard that they do eat the corals. There are many different colors though, as far as I know some are harmful and some are not. We brought one of the purple into J & L and they said they are fine.

[beaux]

Ok the two corals it eats are picollopora and stylophora (spelling may be a little off but here is a pic from the GARF site


Hope that helps. Mine are not az white as those are or as large, but i only have a few stony type corals.

[tang daddy]

Thanks for posting it, that looks like a larger species of star, the ones I have are white and the center of them have a purple bit....if I saw them eat coral I would be in trouble as they have exploded in population, alot of people buying coral from me often ask for some...