Please Identify this fish for me

[zvonmonet]

I was told its a star fish and i just wanted to know more about it, reef safe? easy to keep? needs? what does it eat?

if you can provide any help it would be appreciated i am acclimating it the LFS guy told me its a star fish and wanted 55 for it i sold him for 40

Fish 053.jpg

[olemiss reb]

It's a feather star. 99.99% chance it is going to die. Check out wet web for info but these should not be sold to the general public.

[zvonmonet]

**** so your saying i should go return it?

[olemiss reb]

Originally Posted by zvonmonet

**** so your saying i should go return it?

I'd return it. Feeding them is the problem, they are nocturnal and have to be spot fed hours after the lights go out and even with a rigid feeding schedule most still die.. Send greenbean a pm, he should be able to tell you alot more about them, or post this in the invert section where he will see it. If your LFS was selling it and did not know that it was a feather star--I'd look for a new LFS.

[zvonmonet]

its a china town store they didn't have it for sale i just went and said what is that i love it and wanted it when i saw it swim he told me its 55 i got it down to 40 thought it was a good deal hahah.... i am gonna flip at them tomorrow

[mscarpena]

Why would you be upset with them. You approached them about buying it. He should have told you about their care, but if you did not ask then it would be assumed you know their care. You really need to do your research on what you are buying before you buy it. It will make your experiences in this hobby ,uch more enjoyable. less costly, and your livestock will thank you.

[zvonmonet]

i did ask him about the care he told me SUPER EASY exact words i will return it... i am gonna flip at his store if he won't take it lol... i spend over 400 bucks in 2 days being there so he better hook some good **** up

[demonclownfish]

Bongo Shrimp has had these. not sure if youve seen him around or not but he had a few going at once. he fed them during lights on and they were fine.

[zvonmonet]

thanks for the help guys gonna try to take him back tomorrow and trade him for a coral or something, just sucks i have to mission there again just for that

[olemiss reb]

Originally Posted by demonclownfish

Bongo Shrimp has had these. not sure if youve seen him around or not but he had a few going at once. he fed them during lights on and they were fine.

BonGo Shrimp post in the inverts forum and not the new to the hobby because the animals he keeps are not noob friendly. No offense meant by that comment but feather stars are an expert only animal.

[dots]

This article describes what is going on here, and the tone of the information generally provided in the NTTH forum.

http://www.reefs.org/library/article/r_toonen13.html

"Feather Stars

By Rob Toonen. Posted to Aqualink discussion board, 2nd September 1999, and Reefkeepers emailing list, 5th October 1999.

I've been in this hobby on and off for 15 years and hardcore for about 5 now, and this is a new one on me. LFS got 3 feather stars in last night. Very beautiful and interesting creature, but I didn't want to spend $80 of something I knew nothing about. What are their requirements, reef safe, etc. etc.

Yes, Ron has a great article on feather stars (Comatulid crinoids) in the Aquarium.Net archives ( http://www.aquarium.net/1296/1296_9.shtml ), and I suggest that you read it if you have any serious interest in keeping these fascinating animals. In that article he explains that crinoids are even more difficult to feed than the majority of filter feeders, because they have a very specific feeding mode that requires a lot of suspended planktonic food of a certain size range. Although the requirement for suspended particluate food of a given size range is generally true of other filter feeders as well, most filter-feeders capture everything that passes through their filtering apparatus (passive capture) that is approximately the correct size (there are no "taste" receptors on the filtering sturctures) and transport it to the mouth where the particles are sorted, and the "tasty" ones are ingested, while the undesirable particles are ejected a "pseudofeces." Even desirable particles can be ejected this way (in balls of mucus) if the suspended particle load is too high, and the animals are capturing more than they can consume. Fortunately for us (and for them ) most typically become less selective the more hungry they get -- so animals like fan worms and clams will usually end up eating whichever particles are available, even if they would ignore these same foods in the wild (this has been demonstrated in a number of captive feeding experiments with a wide range of animals).
Unfortunately for us (and for the feather stars) they filter particles actively, by selecting the "tasty" particles from the water before they capture them. That means that they don't even capture foods that they do not want, and even worse, their food preferences seem to be "hard-wired" on the basis of size, weight, flavor or some combination of those factors. What I mean by that is they only respond to the tasty food items that they would normally take in the wild, and do not appear to show the same decreasing selectivity response when they get hungry that many other filter feeders do. That means that you need to be able to provide a natural diet for the animals in order for them to have *any* chance of surviving in your tank.
So what is the natural diet? Well, this turns out to be a big probelm as well -- first, there haven't been detailed studies of a lot of species, so we're forced to assume (and hope) that the rest of the animals do the same things as the ones that are studied. Unfortunately, despite the fact that there about 400 species of these animals, and they can often be quite abundant in certain areas, they are poorly studied and we don't really know how general the patterns seen in the few studied cases are. With a bit of luck, though, the species in your LFS has the same preference for very small zooplankton, invertebrate larvae, ciliates (and other protozoans), and large phytoplankton (such as concentric diatoms) as the few species that have been studied. If the animal recognizes these same prey items, there is at least a chance of providing food for it, if not, your guess for providing food for it is as good as mine
Despite all those problems, it *is* possible to keep one of these animals in an aquarium -- I must admit that I have one (Himerometra). However, I must also admit that I consider myself an above average aquarist, and I have constant access to foods (such as invertebrate larvae) that few aquarists would. Despite that, I am not currently providing my star with any of those foods -- it's is surviving (and regrowing all the arms damaged during shipment) in my refugium sump. The animal has attached itself to the "spraybar" the delivers water from the tank to the sump, and simply spreads it's arms into the flow generated from that. This tank has a sandbed in the aquarium, as well as one in the sump, there is also an in-tank refugium (from Inland Aquatics) complete with thier detritivore kits and live sand, and the sump was stocked with live sand that I collected myself in various places. I have a *lot* of sand fauna and there is a constant supply of worm larvae, rotifers and protozoans in the aquarium from those sources. In addition, I feed the tank heavily with enriched brine nauplii and phytoplankton (among other things), and also feed rotifers, copepod and various invertebrate larval cultures when I have excess. I have not had the star for very long, but it has shown significant growth in the time that I have had it, so I suspect that it will do fine -- of course, I'm prepared to start specifically target feeding it invertebrate larvae in a separate container if the animal shows signs that it is not getting enough food at some point.
There was recently a post on another list about just this sort of message -- it went something like this:

John Doe,
I think your one failing, if you could call it that, is that you are an advanced hobbiest. Advanced hobbiests can keep difficult critters in some cases, but they are only a very small fraction of the "aquarium world." Perhaps.
Since my move to Houston, I've had the pleasure of interacting w/ hobbiests much more advanced than myself, (>10 yrs exp.) and I've learned one thing that I would like to share. When advanced hobbiests share the fact that they can keep goniopora, cleaner wrasses, regal angels, etc..., they only hurt the hobby at large. When you say that you can keep a cleaner wrasse, others will try it - they think of you as an advanced hobbiest after all. What they might now know is that you have a 450g tank with a lot of fish in it.
Believe me, I am not trying to flame you at all. I'm just airing a frustration that I have w/ the hobby in general. Every time someone starts a goniopora thread, about how there have a <1% success rate, there is always someone who chimes in that they have been keeping them for 2 yrs. Well, I say, "Yeah, thanks a lot buddy! That is so helpful! Do you know why you are successful?" Well....No...
It may give you satisfaction to keep cleaner wrasses and other difficult animals, and it may also give you satisfaction to post your experiences about it. While I agree that it may be all right to do the former, I don't think it helps the hobby to do the latter.

I think that this post really makes an important point -- there are many people on the Net that like to post about their success with difficult species. While it is difficult to determine how many of those posts are true, even if they were all accurate, I still agree with original poster of the letter above that simply boasting of success is not helpful at all, and in fact may be unltimately detrimental to the hobby. I enjoy trying to push myself and see if I can keep difficult animals, but I do *not* encourage others to do it (as I'm sure you'll realize if you've read any of my posts in response to information requests on other difficult species), but if someone is determined to try, I will try to porvide them with the information required to give them the greatest chance of success. There will always be people who want to push the envelope, and if they succeed and can figure out why and how, that helps everyone else who would like to keep those animals -- that's how the hobby advances. The last paragraph of the letter above reads a little harshly, but I suspect that the intention of the author was along the same lines -- a short response saying "I've had lots of success keeping Dendronephthya" (or Goniopora or whatever difficult species you choose) is harmful rather than helpful to both the animals and the person asking for help, because the vast majority of people not only fail to repeat that success but typically get discouraged by the failure. I hope that people realize that when I provide the biology for animals in my post, I am trying to give you the background necessary to make these sort of decisions about your setup, your ability, and the likelihood of success on your own -- I can discourage you from getting the animal and give you all the reasons to stay away from it, but the ultimate decision on whether or not you'll buy it still lies with you...."

[zvonmonet]

thanks for the help guys.... i returned the fish yesterday and picked up a hammer coral in return, i have no experience, as it is my first month with a reef tank so i didn't want to kill the poor thing