For many decades, the quintessential Chocolate Chip Starfish, Protoreaster nodosus, has graced our FOWLR (fish only with live rock) tanks and refugiums with their magnificent spines and bright colors. Short-spine stars, Echinaster spinulosus, while less common, have been around just as…
Scientists Solve the Puzzle of Starfish Body Design
Echinoderms – starfish, brittle stars, sea urchins, sand dollars, and sea cucumbers, have been the subject of some recent research to try to ascertain how they developed their pentaradial body shapes. Starfish evolved some 540 million years ago, and from…
Clean-up Crew, and Their Role in the Reef Aquarium
As mentioned in last week’s article algae and how to manage it is still the biggest problem/concern of many hobbyists both new and old. I would love to say that if everything is kept in balance and nutrients are kept…
Billions of Starfish Melt Into Goo on the Pacific Coast
A disease affecting over a dozen starfish species is decimating coastal populations from Alaska to Mexico. Called Sea Star Wasting Syndrome, the pathogen, possibly Densovirus, is infecting starfish, causing the limbs to detach and their bodies to melt, with some…
Starfishes and Other Echinoderms Book Review
Of all the highly diverse groups of animals that occur on natural reefs, the echinoderms are some of the most unique but also the least represented in our home reef aquariums. We have a basic understanding of starfish, urchins, and…
Paracorynactis Ball Tentacle ‘Anemone’ is a Starfish Killer!
The Ball tentacle Anemone is a very unusual tropical reef cnidarian that has a more than few interesting things going for it. You would think that such an attractive critter would be a popular aquarium candidate but there are some…
Good news for west coast starfish
Record numbers of baby Pisaster starfish are returning to Oregon and Norther California’s coastline after a mysterious wasting disease decimated whole populations over the past two years. The disease was first seen in sea star populations along the west coast…
Asterina starfish, an introduction to this common reef aquarium critter
Have you ever wondered what that itsy bitsy starfish is doing in your tank? The sneaky starfish probably hitchhiked its way in on some live rock or new coral, but now there are dozens of small grayish starfish roaming your tank. It’s…
What you should know about the Crown-of-Thorns starfish
Acanthaster planci, more commonly known as the Crown-of-Thorn starfish, is a voracious predator which feeds on stony coral polyps. The starfish gets its name from the toxic thorn-like spines covering its body, which resemble a biblical “crown of thorns”. The…
The rarely seen Striking Sea Star
Despite the diversity of sea stars that abound in tropical waters, relatively few species find their way into aquariums with any regularity. One of the most interesting species—morphologically, behaviorally and evolutionarily—is also one of the most seldomly encountered: the “Striking…
