• Starfish (asterisk) are corals.

  • Diana7891

This morning I saw something new for myself, a huge asterina (maybe not an asterina) over 1 cm in diameter eating pocillopora, and it was eating quite a lot, a third of the coral was white. In general, I pulled this thing out of the pocillopora, waiting for the camera to charge to take a picture. It's suspiciously large, and all its arms are intact, while asterinas often lack some due to their vegetative reproduction method. Please correct the error in the topic title - it should be "eats" instead of "is eating." Thank you in advance.

Kimberly4253

Asterinka Most likely, the poecilopora got really stressed and started to deteriorate, and the asterinka was already "cleaning up" the damaged surface... For more details, for example, here:

Scott8536

Pocillopora was in excellent health, growing very well, like all SPS corals. The creature attacked for some unknown reason. And again, was it asterina? Asterinas usually crawl around without some limbs.

Melinda

What a cute little "sturgeon" for sure...

Tonya

A star exactly like that was discovered on the poecilopore (which had been growing quite normally before) after which the latter went to the afterlife. Subsequently, no predatory tendencies were observed in the star.

Richard

I decided to add to the overall picture. Recently, I received a sea star (live stones) that had a single aiptasia on it. So, this star climbed onto it and didn't get off for a long time. It's been two days since the star left that spot, and the aiptasia still hasn't appeared. I should add that the star came with me from the Red Sea.

Lynn4242

I tested the star on the umbrellas, placing it on them directly in a closed container - it doesn't eat.

Joshua8425

I have never eaten umbrellas either. But when the new stones arrived, I devoured all the Aiptasia on them. Yesterday, I ate a small Ricordea, also on a new stone. Although there was already Ricordea in the aquarium before, it was living fine. The little rascal was photographed and removed to quarantine. (In the photo, I realized that it doesn't quite look like the owner of the thread.)

Jasmine

I have asterinas eating young briarium.

Colin1418

I have umbrellas cracking on both cheeks, radishes.

Jesse3979

Has anyone tried to fight them?

Sandra7004

The method is simple - "came, saw, separated."