Unknown- looks like starfish??? Help ID.

[jasno999]

Unknown- looks like starfish??? Help ID.

Ok. SO My tank was in need of some cleaning today. I decided to do some pruning and re-aranging. I also dug down into soem sections of my sand bed to just get it agitated and ewhat not.

Well I am looking at the tank about an hour later and I see this white thing on the glass. I look closer and notice it is moving and it looks like the center section of a starfish. It looks like a starfish that hads all it's legs broken off and had basically a mouth left and a few small leg sections....

I have no freakign idea what it could be. I used to have a large brittle star in my tank but it dissapeared about 2 months ago and I figured it was dead. It was brown and huge. This thing is white and tiny....

Here are some pictures. Hopefully somebody can ID it.

[flamingo]

Asterina star.
If you google them, you'll find they "might" be a nuisance in a reef tank.
But for the most part, there's no need to worry about them at all.

[Fishnewb1]

I have those same things... some of them almost look green to me.

[wac121]

I have a bunch of them, they really don't seem to bother anything much, and actually clean your glass some. Mine ended up coming attached to some of the pieces of coral I bought at my local store. I had a friend who told me that if you start to see them more and more that your tank is in really good health. I don't know if that is true or not, but I like to think it is.

[Scuba Kid]

There are different types of asterina stars. Most are harmless, but as Flamingo said, some can cause problems.