Red Linkia Starfish ill

[SuperXdude]

Added a red linkia starfish to tank on Sunday.


Acclimated him for 7 hours before putting him in the tank, and he's been just slowly going downhill.

All other fish/hermits/snails/brittle star/shrimp are fine.

Water params are good.


I'm stuck...


he's doing the "dead starfish" on the bottom, but still moving

SuperX

[Tim Marvin]

Linkias do very poorly out of the ocean. If you touched it at all with your hands it is probably a goner. I'm not trying to be negative these are just very delicate stars and even the experts have a hard time with them.

[Nano_Steve]

hand oils(like tim said) and air are the big killers of these guys. if you touch them or take them out of the water at all(even to move them quickly into the main tank) they melt! like literally!!! good luck with urs though, i hope it pulls through.

take kare, steve

[OrionN]

IME, the real killer of these guys are change in salinity. I would use a drip hose to drip him to our tank. Salinty of change from 30 (most LFS) to 35 ppt (my tank) need about 4 hrs. I use some air tupe hook to hard air tupe bended to U shape, and add a air valve to adjust the flow rate of water. i use this to drip water into the container with the star in it. This is much better than add cups of water every 10 or 15 minutes.
IME, pick up the star with my clean hand cause no problem. Here is my 4 arms Red/Orange Linkia. I hope he will reproduce asexually byt droping another arem in the near future. The missing arem grew 1 cm last month.

http://www.reefland.com/gallery/data/500/1316Star_01.jpg

Minh