Sunday distraction: baby star ID?

[tebstan]

I found a little star crawling on the glass today. So I have accomplished nothing today other than googling little starfish.

Odds are against it being a baby from my sand sifter. But it doesn't look as chubby as asterinas I've seen. It has a weird number of stubby little arms, but it's flat, and marbled. Asterinas seem to always be white or bluish.
I did find something about sps eating asterinas looking marbled, but my few sps seem undamaged.

This little fella is probably getting cold in the bowl he's in, so he's banned to the fuge for now.

Is it just an asterina and I've wasted my morning?

Baby Starfish bottom 6-27-10.jpgBaby Starfish top 6-27-10.jpg

[Kristy]

Hope you are not going to be too disappointed, but yes, that is an asterina. I have so very many to study as I pluck them from our tanks... annoying little things! They can have lots of different variations on the number of arms and can be white/cream to brown, marbled in between.

[tebstan]

I'm glad its not an sps eater, so not disappointed. Never saw a pic of a marbled one in all the reading. Of course, most shots are of the belly. I had a small asterina bloom when the tank was new and haven't seen them since. So I wonder why now all of a sudden I see one... hope that doesn't mean they're going to be taking over the place soon.

[ErikH]

They will eat your zoas.

[tony]

i had asterinas so bad you could barely see through the glass

[Mr Cob]

^that's bad dewd!

Once mine got bad they started munching on a couple of my zoa colonies....and of course they went for the expensive ones first.

Harlequin pair has them under control now.

[allan]

Yeah, I've a single harlequin and it seems to be doing the job. I once had them in my DT in biblical numbers, but now I've only got a few that can be seen at any one time.

[tebstan]

Dang, guys. Way to get me worried and paranoid.

I haven't found any more of his friends. Do they always bloom out to a nuisance quantity?

[Aqua-Dome]

I have never witnessed an asterina eat a coral in ANY of the many tanks I have kept. Of course there are many species. I would consider the particular species in your tank innocent until proven guilty.

[d3rryc]

They will eat your zoas.

SOME asterinas are known to eat zoas, but most don't. I had to get a harlequin shrimp to control mine b/c the stars were eating all of my coralline and turning my rock white, but the kind in my tank never touched my zoas. The trick is observation - no harm, no foul.