HELP! my green brittlestars insides are out

mytwoboys

Member
Attached is a pic, my star had a little white patch yesterday, then at night it looked like a rip with a little salmon colored spot sticking out, then this morning the patch is huge and his insides are exposed. The salinity is normal as it has been for the last 4 or 5 mo.s, everyone else is fine, so I dont understand. How can I fix him? Does he need to be quarantined? Please help quick!
 

ophiura

Active Member
What is your specific gravity? Have you done any recent water changes? Any temperature spikes? What fish do you have? What are your other parameters, including pH, alkalinity and calcium?
Is the animal behaving normally? How often do you feed it?
I would not put it into a QT tank, but you may wish to isolate it within your main system (eg sump, or in a critter carrier cage in the tank). Most of the time they can recover from such injuries which are not all that uncommon. But that is assuming there is no significant water quality issue.
 

mytwoboys

Member
Hi,
I posted this on the disease section too tonite as I couldn't remember which one I had done, it is 1:30 am after all. :) My perimeters are: Ph 8.0 , ammonia .25 , nitrite 0, nitrate is really high, like the highest it shows on the chart. 1) Don't know about predator attack, had him for at least 5 months w/ current fish, no one ever bothers him, 2) definitely not distended disk syndrome as I watch him eat every time I feed him and never give him too much. Apparently my nitrates could be the huge problem! Also, when I inherited him from the people I bought the tank from they told me they kept the salinity at 1.026 so I have always kept it there and no one seems adversely affected. Is that too high, they said when it was lower he was turning brown. He now has an eaten away part on 2 of his legs in the middle that weren't there yesterday. I have since used AmQuel + and "cycle" tonight and did a 10g water change, tested and retested and nothing has changed. Now I really don't know what else to do. :help:
 

xtech

Member
I WOULD START WITH A 20% WATER CHANGE...NOW! then why are your nitrates so high? what kind of filter system do you have...canister ? have you always had a problem with nitrates or is this an isolated incident?
 

mytwoboys

Member
I have no idea why it's so high, never had a prob before. I will do another w/c tonite too. When I woke up this morning he was back to his old spot, back to eating and preying again, and seems perfectly fine now, his legs appear to be healing, but not sure about the hole in the top. Apparently the stuff I did last night helped somewhat or he would still be acting 1/2 dead. The tank is clean, sand is clean, nothing is dead, so I don't know what it could be. I read that someone said they used some sort of mesh bags for nitrate, does that work?
 
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