Brittle Star lost a fight!

[fishycouple]

Hi:
Last evening a piece of one of my brown brittle stars floated out from behind my rocks. The piece was 1/2 of the body attached to two legs. The rest was missing and this piece was dead.
He was part of a clean-up crew from this website. The rest of the crew is another brittle star like this one (only they were whole when introduced), a few pepermint shrimps, and a ton of snails and hermit crabs, and a few emerald crabs.
Since I added the cleanup crew, I have added a small fire shrimp and a small coral banded shrimp.
The fish are a mature Maroon clown, a tiny yellow tang, a young coral beauty and a goby.
What do you think destroyed this star? Would the other brittle star have atacked him? I thought possibly the coral banded shrimp, but he was considerably smaller than the star.
Thanks in advance,
Rick

 

[buzz]

Could have been the CBS, the Emeralds, or the hermits for that matter.
I would lean towards the Emeralds, with the CBS in second place. Gotta make sure those crabs are spot fed with their appetites curbed.
I assume the star is dead? If not, legs may regenerate...not sure about part of the disc though...

 

[fishycouple]

The tank was setup for 4 years, was predator. Those guys are messy, so traded them in to LFS for store credit. Scrubbed all live rock to rid it of hair algae, left tank filter running with 50% water change for 3 weeks until it re-cycled. Then put in cleanup crew.
Aclimated entire cleanup crew for 1 hour floating for temperature, then 1/4 water change with my water, for 15 min, then another 1/4 water change for 15 min, then lifted the animals out and put them in my tank.
They were in ther for about 3 weeks and eliminated hair algae residue, then I introduced the fish from another tank (aclimating them as above).
It was after another week I noticed the dead star. He had two legs attached to about 1/2 of the disk, and was truely dead.
I havent seen the emeralds for a while either, I have live rock filling the back of the tank, but they were very tiny (about 1/2" in diameter). Kinda small from this site!
I'm watching to see if I can see the other brittle star but so far he is in hiding.

 

[kdogg721]

Hey fishy,
I read on one of your old posts that you have a Giant Cup Mushroom. I have one as well and I had problems with it eating my small fish and shrimp! It ate 4 damsels, one wrasse, two peppermint shrimps and my cleaner shrimp. I spent too much money on this thing for it to be doing this and now cannot get a seahorse because im scared it will get eaten too.
Any advice? Did you have similar problems?

 

[essop3]

acclimation death for stars can occur up to a month later. You may have better luck with drip acclimation. Check the description to see how long for each animal.