Sorry, but this is not true. Of course it depends on the star. Just about every reef safe star in this business is called a Linckia.
Linckia do not for any reason need light. If they show some preference, it is to insure that they stay in a region where their food is. Many of these stars will extend and arm out along the surface of the water, which is presumed to mean they are feeding on some of the bacterial film that can grow there.
Linckia, Fromia and other similar stars eat algal and bacterial films, and other encrusting animals in their path, including sponges and bryozoans. It is unclear what their wild diet is, and therefor difficult to reproduce that in captivity. One thing appears to be highly correlated with success: large tanks with a lot of LR. Meaning 100+ g with 100 lbs+ of LR and no other similar stars. These animals do not eat leftovers or detritus, and will not, generally, take additional food. The tank must be large, mature and stable. Fromia stars in particular seem to fade after the 1 year mark, dying, in all probability from starvation. A few months or a year 'success' with them is not success.
They all require very long acclimations on the order of 4+ hours. They are very intolerant of salinity stress, or changes in other water parameters.
It is imperative to keep higher specific gravities around 1.025 or 1.026, full reef salinity.
Low specific gravity is considered helpful only to fish, and is very stressful to all invertebrates. Indeed, mass mortality of seastars have been reported in bays after heavy rains!! They are very highly stressed by low specific gravity! Do some searches on reef tank water parameters.
