Starfish eating shrimp?

[Aquarancher]

I have a 29g Biocube, started up 6 wks ago. Things are going pretty well - I've got a lot of cyano algae but understand that is expected. I bought a serpent starfish yesterday along with some snails. Almost immediately after adding them to my tank, my peppermint shrimp came over and started what appeared to be an attack on my starfish. I let it go for 2 mins or so and when I scared the shrimp away the starfish had a chunk out of it's leg. I continued to watch the interaction and ended up putting the starfish in an underwater container for frys to protect it. This morning I tried reintroducing it to the tank and the shrimp immediately came over.

I have been told not to feed the shrimp because I want them to clean my tank.

Does anyone have suggestions? I've looked up the other variety of shrimps and am fairly certain that these are indeed peppermint shrimp.

Thanks!

[Aquarancher]

OK, I fed the shrimp - maybe should have clued into that earlier :lightbulb: - we'll see what happens.

[jtrux]

I've heard they will do that, i'd expect it to keep happening if it was so vigorous the first couple times fed or not.

[coraline79]

I may be wrong but, a lot of shrimp will eat starfish. I have 4 peppermint shrimp though and they don't seem to eatmuch at all. My Harlequin is halfway through a chocolate starsnack though.

[Jonthefishguy]

Peppermints are known to also attack coral and inverts. Lets face it, they are opportunistic. Like many things that we hear are reef safe, not everything stated to be so, gets that memo!