Hitchhikers- Asterina Starfish

[kindasleepy]

Opinion time! I bought a GSP coral frag from Aquarium Illusions the other day. It looks very healthy, is always completely open and grabs on to food well. Well yesterday, The Boy texts me a picture of two tiny white starfish that were on the glass moving away from the frag. They're tiny, not quite a centimetre from tip of arm to other arm, have 5 arms, are stuck on the glass and appear to be mostly white. They have very slightly darker spots on them but it's really too small to really get a view of a pattern. They look like they're cruising around grazing on the algae on the glass. I'd take a picture but lack the skills necessary :P

From reading online they are most likely part of the asterina family of stars but there's a lot of debate about whether they are beneficial or detrimental in a reef system. I'm finding a lot of arguments for both and am having a hard time finding any sort of consensus. So here's where I ask you guys if you've seen these little guys and if they've eaten any of your coral.

My tank currently is home to the following:

dragon goby

firefish

2 mollies (which I cycled my tank with, anyone who wants them can have them, btw.)

a frogspawn coral

a zoanthid

the brand new GSP

snails (sand sifting and turbo)

a hermit crab

peppermint shrimp

[Vitaminz]

Any time I find starfish in the main display, I take them out and banish them to the sump. They really do a good job of cleaning up, but had to many bad experiences with them eating corals. Once they get a taste for it, it can turn out bad.

Jeff

[Jro]

I don't really know lots about saltwater/reef systems but aren't starfish voracious eaters of Copepods and Amphipods which are supposed to be beneficial for those systems?

[Vitaminz]

I don't really know lots about saltwater/reef systems but aren't starfish voracious eaters of Copepods and Amphipods which are supposed to be beneficial for those systems?

The Asterina species found in some reef tanks, has the reputation of being risky or just plain unsafe in the reef. This is interesting because for many years prior to that, they were not only regarded as harmless, but beneficial! What happened? Did they all change their voter registrations overnight? No, the answer really is quite simple. While they favor one type of prey that is convenient or popular to us, like sand bed worms, brown diatoms or bubble algae, they will adapt to eating other food items following the reduction or absence of a preferred food item. Thus, a persistent growth of microalgae will likely have less trouble with misbehaving omnivores than another aquarist with an aggressively skimmed and scrubbed tank that supports little growth of the matter. In a phrase, the hungrier that a so-called reef-safe creature gets, the less reef-safe that creature becomes.

Jeff