scubasteve
Distinguished Member
- Joined
- May 4, 2014
- Location
- Cambridge, Ontario
well I know there's huge debate about if asterina starfish eat any pests or not and after a ton of searching and reading I have never found any confirmation of asterinas ridding pests in a closed isolated system. A lot of observations leave the pros believing so but nobody has come to a conclusion with evidence that it is since isolation in the wild is impossible and other factors could be doing it.
Around summer time I got a small colony of tri colour valida that after dip I found flatworms
usually this is a bummer and means a lot of dipping and waiting but I decided to try an experiment since you usually lose colonies infected that bad with aefw (scary because colony looked really healthy, this is why you should always dip and qt to all you newbies reading). I took approximately 50 asterinas out of my DT tank and put it in my small 5gal qt with the infected coral. The only dip I did was when I first got it home going from bag to dip to acclimation to qt. we all know dip only kills the adults so all those eggs were still there. I know there were aefw because I found 6 in the dip container stunned at the bottom was kinda heartbroken and pissed at that point since I did drive quite a bit.
After the first day I noticed not one asterina was on the side or bottom and they were all over the coral! I wasn't too worried since I'm expecting a loss at this point anyway so watch and see what happens. At first there was almost zero pe probably because the aefw were chomping them all but slowly I noticed areas coming back and areas near the encrusting or deep crevasses still getting chomped with the little tell tale white nibble areas (encrusting edge is a favourite place for aefw or underside of plug. Good place to look for inspections) after about a month I noticed the asterinas had left the coral alone completely and despite being in rough shape and a bit bleached out it had excellent pe. At this point I waited 1 more week before removing asterinas and the whole week they avoided the coral like the plague. After a dip with nothing to show I left it in qt for another 2 weeks with no asterinas. I then followed up with another dip at this point and again nothing. Now I'm both excited and surprised. Just to be sure I left it for another 2 weeks followed by a dip to check and again nothing. Now confident that is was clean with no signs of aefw, bite marks, lack of pe and colour starting to return I finally got to add it to my DT it took a bit for colour to come back and still has a bit to go but coral is doing great, has new growth that looks very colourful and I learned something new.
WE CAN NOW SAY ASTERINAS EAT AEFW too bad you need a stereoscope to tell species of asterinas apart. I do have one but can't find info to distinguish between them and u of g can be slow responding to emails.
Around summer time I got a small colony of tri colour valida that after dip I found flatworms
usually this is a bummer and means a lot of dipping and waiting but I decided to try an experiment since you usually lose colonies infected that bad with aefw (scary because colony looked really healthy, this is why you should always dip and qt to all you newbies reading). I took approximately 50 asterinas out of my DT tank and put it in my small 5gal qt with the infected coral. The only dip I did was when I first got it home going from bag to dip to acclimation to qt. we all know dip only kills the adults so all those eggs were still there. I know there were aefw because I found 6 in the dip container stunned at the bottom was kinda heartbroken and pissed at that point since I did drive quite a bit. After the first day I noticed not one asterina was on the side or bottom and they were all over the coral! I wasn't too worried since I'm expecting a loss at this point anyway so watch and see what happens. At first there was almost zero pe probably because the aefw were chomping them all but slowly I noticed areas coming back and areas near the encrusting or deep crevasses still getting chomped with the little tell tale white nibble areas
(encrusting edge is a favourite place for aefw or underside of plug. Good place to look for inspections) after about a month I noticed the asterinas had left the coral alone completely and despite being in rough shape and a bit bleached out it had excellent pe. At this point I waited 1 more week before removing asterinas and the whole week they avoided the coral like the plague. After a dip with nothing to show I left it in qt for another 2 weeks with no asterinas. I then followed up with another dip at this point and again nothing. Now I'm both excited and surprised. Just to be sure I left it for another 2 weeks followed by a dip to check and again nothing. Now confident that is was clean with no signs of aefw, bite marks, lack of pe and colour starting to return I finally got to add it to my DT it took a bit for colour to come back and still has a bit to go but coral is doing great, has new growth that looks very colourful and I learned something new.WE CAN NOW SAY ASTERINAS EAT AEFW
too bad you need a stereoscope to tell species of asterinas apart. I do have one but can't find info to distinguish between them and u of g can be slow responding to emails.
