Brittle Star lost all its arms!

[uvmfish]

After placing my Brittle Star in the tank (after acclimation of course) it starting losing its arms... it eventually lost them all and died. Nothing attacked it, it just seemed to "throw" its arms off. I also have a serpent star and it is fine. Water quality is fine except for a dip in pH (8.0 from 8.2). The tank is a 55 with about 25lbs lr, a Yellow Tailed Damsel and CBS (and serpent star of course) It has been up for about 4 months and cycled great.

 

[goldrush]

Give us a little more info--What else in tank? How much sand? etc.etc.

 

[fishymissy]

What do you keep your salinity at?

 

[uvmfish]

I have only the lr, damsel, Coral banded shrimp, serpent star and a few hermits/snails. My salinity is (and was when this happened) 1.023. Sand bed is 2-3 inches. I have a canister filter and a power filter. Temp is 78. No skimmer yet. Any ideas would be appreciated!! If you need more info let me know!

 

[birdy]

How long did you acclimate them for? I know they need a pretty long acclimation time, I just acclimated 3 and I did it for about 2 hrs, and mine are doing great. I know some people drip acclimate for up to 4 hrs.

 

[uvmfish]

I acclimated for only about 20 minutes, I didn't realize that they were that sensitive! Most of what I have heard is that they are hardy. When I buy another I will make sure to extend the acclimation time! I felt bad... it was my first loss in this hobby.
Has anyone ever heard of brittle stars doing this before though?

 

[kris walker]

Did you actually see one of the arms detach, or did you come back into the room and find an arm already detached?
Are you sure your other starfish or CB shrimp didn't do it in a series of fights you didn't see?
As mentioned, acclimation is important, but really only important when pH and salinity are quite different. I have 2 brittle stars and only acclimated them for about 15 minutes and they are fine.
kris

 

[uvmfish]

I actually saw it detatch 2 of its arms. The other 3 I didn't see. One of the arms I saw came off almost whole and the other was in small sections over maybe 15 minutes. It was a sad sight.

 

[heavenly damsel]

I acclimated my 2 brittle stars over about 45 minutes as I do fish and crabs and they were fine. Shrimp take longer to acclimate and blue linkia take about 16 hours to acclimate...but brittles shouldn't take that long. There must have been something wrong with him to start with. Where did you get him? online or LFS?

 

[lu]

A lot of stars just can't handle being moved and shuffled around a lot and unfortunately you don't know the history behind it. I had some stars die on me too, fell apart....geez, gave me nightmares for a while. What an awful sight. If your water conditions were right and you acclimated an appropriate amount of time, I would say your stars were on the way out before you got them so don't feel real bad. For all inverts though, and especially stars, they need to be acclimated for a longer period of time than fish do.
I decided to try again on the star thing and I now have 3 in the tank and they are all doing fine.
Good luck to you....