unleashed
Active Member
ok I know im not the only person here to have a brittle starfish: have you left a broken limb that wasnt eaten in the in the tank?if so did it just rot away or what? or do you just toss it out.I have a large black brittle starfish i noticed he had a leg missing today i blame the grouper so I placed him into a large bowl of water from the tank and acclimated him to my smaller tank wheer he found himself a nice rock to hide in.pretty normal thing to do right?well as my daughter picked it up another leg snapped off now it has two legs and one left behind in the bowl of water.thinkin ok they will grow back no biggy felt bad for it but these things happen.they are very brittle and tend to break easily. well i go and do a few arrens took about an hr or so.when i got back i went to toss out the broken limb
it wasnt dead it crawled around on my hand as if it were searching for water.so i placed it back into the bowl this was just to weird for me. I let it sit for a while longer 3 or 4 hrs later i pick it up again its still moving so i placed it into the tank with the brittle star it came from. i looked into my big tank and noticed the ather leg still in the rocks so i wondered .would it still move? sure enough it was still moving.i placed that leg into the tank with the other leg and they crawled to each other like they knew each other i placed them 3 inches apart mind you now they are next to each other.can we say weird ?very weird!! ok so anyone that well knows this nic knows i like to read and research so off reading and researching i went.
this is what I found:
(Behavior of brittle stars
As the name suggests, the arms of the brittle stars are rather liable to break. This is actually an escape mechanism. Those arms regenerate quickly and an entire new organism can regenerate, if the broken arm is attached to a seizable portion of the disk. Brittle stars can reproduce asexually by self-division. Brittle stars are the most active and fastest moving echinoderms.)
we notice this incident about 9 am this morn almost 12 hrs later these legs are still crawling around the tank. anyone ever had this happen? or am i living in the twilight zone
it wasnt dead it crawled around on my hand as if it were searching for water.so i placed it back into the bowl this was just to weird for me. I let it sit for a while longer 3 or 4 hrs later i pick it up again its still moving so i placed it into the tank with the brittle star it came from. i looked into my big tank and noticed the ather leg still in the rocks so i wondered .would it still move? sure enough it was still moving.i placed that leg into the tank with the other leg and they crawled to each other like they knew each other i placed them 3 inches apart mind you now they are next to each other.can we say weird ?very weird!! ok so anyone that well knows this nic knows i like to read and research so off reading and researching i went.
this is what I found:
(Behavior of brittle stars
As the name suggests, the arms of the brittle stars are rather liable to break. This is actually an escape mechanism. Those arms regenerate quickly and an entire new organism can regenerate, if the broken arm is attached to a seizable portion of the disk. Brittle stars can reproduce asexually by self-division. Brittle stars are the most active and fastest moving echinoderms.)
we notice this incident about 9 am this morn almost 12 hrs later these legs are still crawling around the tank. anyone ever had this happen? or am i living in the twilight zone
