cc star eating urchin!

[newtankman]

Ok…my cc star keeps trying to eat the pencil urchin! The cc raps himself around the urchin and releases his stomach and starts to digest the urchin.
Is this common behavior? I did not read anything that said the cc was predatory.

 

[michaeltx]

well I dont know what you were reading but the CC star is VERY preditory and will eat any sessile inverts and corals if it has a chance to. even urchins.
Mike

 

[debbie]

Yes CC stars are very predatory. You can try spot feeding it some krill, put some krill using a stick beside it and it should move over and feed off the krill.
Do some reading on this site about CC stars and you will gain a huge amount of education about them.
Hopefully you can get your CC star to spot feed or you will wake up one morning with no urchin left.....

This is only "natural behavior" for CC stars too. It is us the "aquarist" that must become eduacated before we get these neat things for our tanks..

 

[garnet13aj]

Well, I have a cc star and I had an urchin which died a few days later and I couldn't figure out whether it at the urchin after or before it died. I've bought another one and haven't had any problems (the urchin seems to be about as fast as the cc star). I guess I don't know what to say except maybe it was dead already...maybe it wasn't. Good luck, I hope everything works out okay.

 

[newtankman]

I feed all the stars every other day raw shrimp, and have never had any problems until now. The pu is not dead, I removed the cc from him and gave him some raw shrimp.
I did have a temperature problem early in the week caused by a faulty heater where I lost a fish and a crab. It may be the case where the urchin is not in the best shape yet and the cc star is picking up on that.

 

[reefkprz]

eventually he's gonna kill the urchin when your not looking, its just a matter of time, any corals are also at risk. any snails or clams too. they are highly predatory, somethings are just harder to catch (they are really slow)

 

[garnet13aj]

Mine has left snails alone so far, but I purposely put clams from the supermarket in there for him to munch on if he can find them and open them up.