Reef-Roids and Basket Stars

[DEAD_BY_DAWN]

I wanted to pass along this tip to anyone who is interested in keeping basket stars,being one of the more diffucult species to keep in the home aquarium and rejecting every other food i have tried reef roids seem to be very attractive to this family,they show great feeding responce and now after six months have grown,i will keep a update and hope that it will pass the one year mark,i would like to add though i do have one of the smaller ones it's current size is about 4" accross.
John

[Chin_Lee]

John, very interesting ... thanks for the info and keep us updated.

[reeferaddict]

Originally Posted by DEAD_BY_DAWN

I wanted to pass along this tip to anyone who is interested in keeping basket stars,being one of the more diffucult species to keep in the home aquarium and rejecting every other food i have tried reef roids seem to be very attractive to this family,they show great feeding responce and now after six months have grown,i will keep a update and hope that it will pass the one year mark,i would like to add though i do have one of the smaller ones it's current size is about 4" accross.
John

Better be careful or the bleeding hearts will be all over you for keeping something not recommended to mainstreamers... Kudos to you from me though... keep us posted...

[OCDP]

Interesting indeed. Has anyone done any experiments with Linkia's or any other harder to keep starfish? I have tried with my orange sea star and I seen a feeding response.. pretty neat.

[Psyire]

I am curious as to your feeding schedule regarding the 'roids and star. More info would be awesome.

[Willow]

Originally Posted by OCDP

Interesting indeed. Has anyone done any experiments with Linkia's or any other harder to keep starfish? I have tried with my orange sea star and I seen a feeding response.. pretty neat.

my linka seems to like to eat dead crocea clams

[OCDP]

I'm wondering if roids would be enough to really keep one of these starfish alive and thriving? Or, how would we know anyways? As it's been stated we don't notice a starfish dying because they don't show signs of starvation for so long. Just wondering if roids would be a staple food for these guys to keep them thriving in captivity. (on top of what they eat in our tanks)

[Kabong]

I think that the fact that there is growth is a good sign.
From what I've read the other problem with the baskets stars is they need to feed over a period of time.
One solution i saw for this is using a drip method of feeding.
Prepare your food mix in a container, Water it down. Then start a syphon on it.
Slow the syphon down to a drop per second or so. Then place the dripping end near the basket so the current carry's the food to him.

I've been trying the above method with a mix of reef roids and phyto on a flame scallop.
It only been a few months though so it's to early to tell how it's working.

[DEAD_BY_DAWN]

Originally Posted by OCDP

I'm wondering if roids would be enough to really keep one of these starfish alive and thriving? Or, how would we know anyways? As it's been stated we don't notice a starfish dying because they don't show signs of starvation for so long. Just wondering if roids would be a staple food for these guys to keep them thriving in captivity. (on top of what they eat in our tanks)

Frow what i have seen when it comes to basket stars that have not been fed the right type of food or enough of the right food there "arms" start to fall apart and in the end fall off,i dont want to say "hey ReefRoids can keep keep all of them alive"but one one i have which was a filler in a shipment has or seemed to have done well on this diet,and to watch them feed is something else there flailing arms grabbing at food is very entertaining to watch,i will try to get a correct I.D on the one i have and perhaps get someone to take a vid of it feeding.
I'm not sure if Linkia's would be able to feed aswell on the roids as a filter feeder due to there feeding habits,i have given up on keeping even the smaller ones of this species due to the fact that that nine out of ten seem to starve to death in all but the largest aqauriums,this is my own opinion and perhaps people have better luck with them than myself,the two that i have tried in the past both seemed to starve to death in a mature reef ,but clearly not the right sort of food for them.
For feeding i simply dilute the roids in a glass and use a a turkey baster and GENTLY squirt the star over a min or two the star will stop responding when again i'm guessing you are squirting to hard or it's full ,feeding is done every night when the main lights go off,if you have cleaner shrimp or other more active inverts this becomes a problem due to them irritating the star.

[Chaloupa]

Post a picture please? sort of an interesting looking species...