Starfish Disease

f1998

f1998

Member
Ok, I have had my tank for a year now and there has been no problems at all. My starfish has been in there for 8 months and there has been no problems with it. I recently noticed that two of the starfishs legs our almost all white and you can see the bone. I dont know if this is a disease or if its just suffering from somesort of parisite. I have checked my water and it all comes up fine. I just recently added a new starfish and after 3 days, his legs our looking the same way now. Can somebody pls help me out on what to do.
Will Melaflex cure this problem or is there something someone can recommend to me? :help:
 
sepulatian

sepulatian

Moderator
Originally Posted by f1998
Ok, I have had my tank for a year now and there has been no problems at all. My starfish has been in there for 8 months and there has been no problems with it. I recently noticed that two of the starfishs legs our almost all white and you can see the bone. I dont know if this is a disease or if its just suffering from somesort of parisite. I have checked my water and it all comes up fine. I just recently added a new starfish and after 3 days, his legs our looking the same way now. Can somebody pls help me out on what to do.
Will Melaflex cure this problem or is there something someone can recommend to me? :help:
What kind of stars do you have? What is your SG reading? How did you acclmate the new star? Starfish do not get fish parasites.
 
f1998

f1998

Member
I have one Red Starfish and one Orange Linckia Starfish. I'v had the Red Starfish for 8 months and the Orange Linckia Starfish for 3 days. My SG rating is 1.23. I accimulated them for 2 1/2 hrs using the drip method. Could that be my problem, the SG rating. I used to have my saltwater at 1.25-1.26. This is when my other starfish was heathly. Should I change the SG gradually back to 1.25-1.26? If that is it, will the starfish get better?
 
sepulatian

sepulatian

Moderator
Originally Posted by f1998
I have one Red Starfish and one Orange Linckia Starfish. I'v had the Red Starfish for 8 months and the Orange Linckia Starfish for 3 days. My SG rating is 1.23. I accimulated them for 2 1/2 hrs using the drip method. Could that be my problem, the SG rating. I used to have my saltwater at 1.25-1.26. This is when my other starfish was heathly. Should I change the SG gradually back to 1.25-1.26? If that is it, will the starfish get better?
The orange linkia is not likely to recover. All stars need a constant SG of 1.025 or 1.026. Consistancy is more important than either of the two readings. All stars need to be drip acclimated for at least 4 hrs. Linkias require at least 5 hrs of slow dripping. These animals come from the ocean where everything is remarkably stable. You may be able to save the red by slowly bringing your SG back up. Hopefuly Ophiura will see this and offer her advice.
 
f1998

f1998

Member
Thank you for your feeback. I will gradually return the SG back to 1.025. Hopefully this saves one of them. I will check back later on today to see if she replys as well.
 
sepulatian

sepulatian

Moderator
Originally Posted by f1998
Thank you for your feeback. I will gradually return the SG back to 1.025. Hopefully this saves one of them. I will check back later on today to see if she replys as well.
Returning the SG to 1.025 is a good idea, be sure to do it slowly.
 
f1998

f1998

Member
I raised it to 1.024 now but my starfish our looking even worse. The leg is almost completely off now and the new orange starfish is looking even worse. Is there anything I can put in the tank to help them?
 
G

gustavo

Guest
The only thing I have ever seen recover from legs coming off etc are brittle stars, this happens to mine fairly regularly. Sadly I think the main problem with keeping stars like linkas or even sand sifters is they run out of food fairly quickly. A brittle star goes for left over food, a linka star goes for particualar types of algaes like film algae. A tank needs to be fairly old and very well established to keep these more decorator type stars. It's kinda like the problem most people have with mandrin gobies, they live for six months and then starve to death because they run out of pods to eat.
 
f1998

f1998

Member
I have know idea why this is happening. I just put the Orange starfish in there 4 days ago and now hes having the same problem. Do you think there is something in the tank that is causing this?
 
f1998

f1998

Member
Well. I just checked my ammonia and it is .5. It think this is the problem Im having. I just bought some stuff to remove ammonia. Hopefully this helps alot.
 
sepulatian

sepulatian

Moderator
Originally Posted by f1998
Well. I just checked my ammonia and it is .5. It think this is the problem Im having. I just bought some stuff to remove ammonia. Hopefully this helps alot.
Why do you have ammonia? I would opt for small frequent water changes over adding chemicals.
 
f1998

f1998

Member
Well, I did remove the front LS/CC because it was stained brown yestereday but I did a 50% water change after that, but my fish and anenome our actually looking alot healthier since I did that. I think its because I had alot of Debris in the sand. My starfish is actually looking a little better now that I changed the Front LS/CC out and replaced it. I think, I may have had ammonia in my water and didnt even know it. I did have the RO water sitting in a trash can remixed for a while. I did notice that alot of dirt and other things were in the water. I noticed it once the water got to the bottom of the Trash Can. It could have been harming the starfish when I changed the water with that.
I never had a ammonia tester before. I had a 5-1 tester before. Thought Nitrate 2 and 3 were Ammonia testers. Ive had the Tank up for 9 months
 
sepulatian

sepulatian

Moderator
Originally Posted by f1998
Well, I did remove the front LS/CC because it was stained brown yestereday but I did a 50% water change after that, but my fish and anenome our actually looking alot healthier since I did that. I think its because I had alot of Debris in the sand. My starfish is actually looking a little better now that I changed the Front LS/CC out and replaced it. I think, I may have had ammonia in my water and didnt even know it. I did have the RO water sitting in a trash can remixed for a while. I did notice that alot of dirt and other things were in the water. I noticed it once the water got to the bottom of the Trash Can. It could have been harming the starfish when I changed the water with that.
I never had a ammonia tester before. I had a 5-1 tester before. Thought Nitrate 2 and 3 were Ammonia testers. Ive had the Tank up for 9 months
You should realy pick up a master test kit. It tests ammonia, nitrite, nitrate and PH. It costs all of $30. ALL of these need to be monitored regularly if you are going to have a successful tank. Ammonia is deadly, Nitrite is stressful in even small amounts, nitrate is terrible if you allow it to increase, PH fluctuations are very harmful. They all need to be closely monitored, along with SG and temp.
 
f1998

f1998

Member
Tank size is 75
My tank setup consists of a wet/dry filter with 3 filter pads, bio balls with Live Rock, and a Carbon Filteration. I just added the live rock and carbon filter bag to my wet/dry today. I took out some of the Bio Balls. I have 80 IBS of LR. My lights consist of 4 whites and 4 blues, with a total of 460 watts of T5. I keep the whites on for 4 hrs a day and 8 hrs for blue. I am running 1600 GPH currenltly so a turnover rate of 21X.
I use to have my whites on for 8 hrs a day and blues on for 10 hrs total so 1hr blue, 8 hr white with blue, whites off, then blues stay on for 1 more hr. Just a couple days ago I reduced the lights to the 4 hrs for whites and 8 hrs for blues
 
f1998

f1998

Member
Ok, well the Orange Starfish disolved. I checked my Salinity today and noticed that it was completely wrong. I used another Hydrometer and it was 1.032
. The one I had used for about a year now said 1.025. I checked my water in the Trash Can that I used (RO WATER) and it was 1.032. I reduced the Salinity to 1.028-1.029. In the Trash Can, I changed that to 1.026. I will reduce it tommorow in the tank to 1.028 even then to 1.027 the next and so on until it hits 1.026. I think thats the reason why both starfishes our losing there arms. Hopefully somebody posts something about this and lets me know if this can still save my red starfish. All arms are gone.
 
f1998

f1998

Member
Don't know but I do have algae in the tank. I have green hair algae and some algae on the glass that it can eat.
 
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