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Atlantic Serpent Star with strange behavior 7/18/08
Hello - <Hello!> I have a green Atlantic serpent star (his body
is about 1.5" in diameter - his total length is far more than
12" when extended) in a 125 gallon tank with a lot of live rock,
but not many other fish. <By 'fish' you must mean 'snack
food'...> Yes, he's become quite the fish hunter, and his
most recent kill was the Hawkfish he'd lived with for over 4 years
(only a black long-spined urchin, a striped damsel and the blue tang
are left of the 6 I put him in there with)... <The urchin will
survive...the others best beware> Right after he'd eaten the
Hawkfish I noticed some strange behavior. At first, he sat curled up in
his cave for a few days, not even coming out for food (the Hawkfish was
a much bigger meal then he was used to, however). Then, he moped in his
cave upside down, with his mouth facing up and his back on the ground.
Then, he moved to the front of the tank, where there's a lot of
light, and where he usually never comes unless we feed him. He's
still upside down in the front of the tank, and I thought he was
splitting because there's a tear in his underside: his 5 arms end
in pie-shaped pieces of body connected by disk-shaped pieces...on
either side of the disks one can normally see his insides through slits
or his central mouth. Now one of the slits is connected to the mouth,
as the disk has torn completely away from the pie-shaped piece on one
side. The slit hasn't gotten any bigger over 5 days, nor has the
listless behavior changed (he just lies there, in the open, upside down
& only responds to being poked or moved...not to food, nor the
urchin, crabs, or snails walking over him). I also noticed a hard piece
of white something shaped like a thin but flat shard of rock sticking
out of the tear. I tried to remove it with tweezers, and it appears to
be attached, yet I can't find evidence of a similar part anywhere
else on his body. It looks like his more flexible spines are moving
inside of him, but not much else is. His color hasn't changed,
either. What is this shard? if it's foreign, is it harming him? Is
the body split normal? What about the behavior? Is this part of
reproduction? I haven't been able to find hard answers on just how
sea stars split (I had heard that they sawed themselves apart with
their arms, but he's definitely not doing that), or pictures
similar to what I'm seeing. I've tried to take pictures, but
you can't really see the split or the shard well. Let me know if a
picture is needed, & I'll try to get a better one. Any info
would help, because if he is dying I'll get him out of that tank -
thanks! <Echinoderms have tremendous powers of regeneration. If this
star appears to degenerate, consider quarantining it. Otherwise I would
just let it be- no picking, tugging, feeding, etc.- until it recovers.
This 'shard' is most likely a fragment of the cartilaginous
tissue that makes up the internal frame for the water-vascular
system.> Laura Reed |
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