Starfish falling apart

[mytank]

For a brown brittle starfish.........this morning he did not hid when the light came on and when I came home from work he was literally in 5 pieces with a small part of the disc body attached to each of the legs. The legs were moving. Now here is the stupid question.......Do they regenerate a new disc body or just legs??????? I flushed him for burial, but now have a funny feeling that I should not have done that.
Thanks

 

[elfdoctors]

They can do both. If this was a recently introduced sea star, it was probably dying from acclimation stress. However, I have seen pictures on these boards of a clearly regenerating disc.

 

[mytank]

the starfish was in the tank about 1.5 months I guess part of this hobby is living and learning the hard way.