Starfish

[oafie2244]

This is a topic rarely discussed on this website so I decided I needed to ask since I seen little info on it. My questions is that my sand sifting star has this orange coloration on one of its legs and it seems that there is no sticky pods under it. It is a stronger orange under it but it is doing the best of all my stars. It moves fast and devours everything on the floor. What should I do about it appendage? Should I cut it off leave it? I have no idea. Also my blue linka has not moved for days. I think it is still alive but is this normal. I put it in about 3 days ago, and it hasn't moved. IS that normal? Thanks for just reading and replying.

Brett

 

[davelin315]

With your linckia star, it could be an acclimation problem since it's only been in there for 3 days. Starfish require very long and slow acclimation processes or they often will die or drop legs. Try and flip the linckia over in a secluded area and see if it flips itself back over. I have a wild caught linckia that was acclimated rather quickly (it spent 10 hours in transit in a small bag with several other stars from Hawaii) and it ended up pinching off 2 arms (which both turned into starfish, but one was given to my friend, the other was eaten by an urchin). If yours does not flip itself back over, there is probably something wrong with it (most likely acclimation). I'm not much help with the sand sifter, but I would think that cutting off the spot would cause more problems than it would solve as you would open the star up to infections.