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I know starfish will regenerate limbs when the starfish is cut through the central disc but is this likewise in an aquarium? Also which are more quickly to regenerate? I know the largest problem with doing it in an aquarium is the lack of space for it to avoid other organisms and the bacteria and other infection causing agents present but is it possible? Or is there something causing it to not regenerate when in an aquarium?
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New starfish can form by cutting off limbs, I have a link from marshreef if I can dig it up. The only problem with starfish is there are only very few that do well in an aquarium. Usually not enough food and space to properly take care of a starfish. They usually end up dying from starvation. -
not enough food? Don't they just eat the marine algae and other algae growing on the glass and rocks?Comment
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Copy and pasted from a different forum.... the author's sn was Ninong
This is not a good choice for a 40-gal aquarium for a couple of reasons: the animal gets too large and a 40-gal tank doesn't offer enough live rock and other substrata for grazing opportunities.
As far as sea stars go, this isn't a bad choice for an aquarium but it just requires a larger tank to survive for any reasonable length of time. That's assuming it wasn't damaged in collection and transport or during the final acclimation process. The chances of it successfully negotiating all of the various stages in the process from the time it is collected until the time you acclimate it to your tank are really quite slim and it could take weeks before the damage becomes obvious. If the animal was not properly acclimated to different water (e.g., salinity) conditions at any step of the way, the damage done is almost always fatal eventually.
While it is not known exactly what these sea stars eat in the wild, they have been observed grazing on algal films, microcrustaceans and organic/bacterial films in aquaria. Or, as one German source puts it, they are "scum suckers." The larger the aquarium, the more live rock and the better the chances are that the animal may find enough to eat. This species does not appear to be predatory on stuff we paid good money for like most sea stars, especially the notorious green brittle star (Ophiarachna incrassata).
Dr. Rob Toonen has written a nice article on them here. Please note that the editors of that online magazine did not catch the many misspellings in the photo captions, which were probably not reviewed by Rob himself before publication. Some hobby authors have a habit of misspelling the name of the genus as Linkia. It's not Linkia, it's Linckia, after J. H. Linck, an 18th century naturalist who wrote about sea stars in 1733. A couple of the photographs misspell the species Linckia multifora as Linckia multiflora. It's multifora, not multiflora. That mistake keeps getting copied over and over again because a couple of hobby authors misspelled it originally and it is usually not noticed. It bugs me because there is a huge difference between flora and fora as anyone who ever studied Latin would know. <End of nitpicking.>Comment
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Aren't sea stars and starfish TECHNICALLY two different things? I could have sworn sea stars grew to be MUCH bigger than starfish?Comment
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Starfish or sea stars are echinoderms belonging to the class Asteroidea.[2] The names "starfish" and "sea star" essentially refer to members of the Class Asteroidea. However, common usage frequently finds "starfish" and "sea star" also applied to ophiuroids which are correctly referred to as "brittle stars" or "basket stars".
source
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/StarfishComment
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oh em gee no qoutes, you stole that! Plagiarism! lol thanks.Comment
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