Linckia Stars

[chrisl1]

Anyone have any, what colors? How are you maintaing them? I have a small oRange oner I picked up a week ago, he seems to be doing well, I saw him in the store for the last month and decided he needed a real home, heh eh

[Reptoreef]

I have a bue linkia in my mixed reef.

[PurpleAardvark]

I have 3, a blue, an orange, and a green with blue spots. They arn't that hard to mantian just be sure you acclimate them very slowly into your tank. Also keep your tank levels consistant.

[chrisl1]

Green with blue spots, that sounds interseting, love to see that.

[PurpleAardvark]

Nice starfish, took me a year to finnaly get one and he hides most of the time. as soon as I get a pic I will post it for you.

[chrisl1]

cool, I always see the really nice purples and speckled ones on reefermadness

[PurpleAardvark]

Hey if you look at the TOM tread that I submitted the reg. blue star fish is out. he usally hides too.

[Reef_Angel]

I had a blue linkia star. He seemed to be happy enough in our reef. Our tank was mature, so we were reef ready for him. He was cool. He roamed the reef cleaning off the rocks, and then decided to go down into some of the places where he could do all the undersides of the rock. He was down there a lot, and eventually just thought he made his home down in the reef. He obviously passed on, but we never had any great changes in our tank. Our cleanup crew proved to be good at their cleaning duties.

My son brought home 3 different Sea Stars from their vacation. We only could identify the biggest one. It was a Red Caribbean Sea Star that live off of shells left behind from other critters. There was a purple & white Sea star that I never could identify, and a black & whi star with 1 leg gone and already dead. The next day I noticed the white & purple looked bad. In looking closer, it was dead and the clean up crew were already eating what was left. I removed him from the tank to make sure he was really dead since sea star's are great about playing dead.
He never moved in the little tank I set up quickly after my son gave them to me to babysit. It was only 2 days before they all were dead.

There is a point to my babbling........
It's generally not the wisest thing to take a live creature of any species out of it's habitat, unless you are completely certain that you know what your getting into. All creatures big and small can be a big surprise when you don't know how to care for it. If you think that your mom & dad would enjoy a dead sea star with one leg, please take the gift with an open heart, and ask them for the future not to bring you anything alive! I would have Loved some dried ones for around our tank area.
Leave what's alive & healthy in the same place you saw it. Have a great time learning about your Linkia Star, and enjoy him too. Sorry about my babble fest! ......Angel :angel2:

[PurpleAardvark]

If you post some pics (pre-death) i could probly give you a name for them. From what I under stand there are only 5 types of true linkia, 4 of them safe for a reef tank. You are right for the long hall starfish arn't the best tank creatures, but leads to anthor point of we could never really tell how old a starfish is when get it. Because the can multiply by division there is not proof positive way to tell how old they are. Size really doesn't have that much of a factor because each place they come from will grow to different sizes. In short there again is a subspieces with in a subspieces. I have had the best luck with the star fish that come out of figi. They arn't harvested as much as the other area's and for some reason adapt better to my tank. Now will this hold true other peoples tank I don't know. Leads to the old saying "what has worked for me may not work for you." I do agree with taking stuff direct from the ocean yourself, in general it is not the best idea in the world. It can lead to your arrested but also have a detrimental effect to the ecosystem of that particular place. So now that I am done with y tree hugging hippie crap, I will give you the requirement that I suggest for a starfish. If you have questions why post and I will answer.
salt 1.024-1.026
cal 350-420
alk 9-15
the tank should be up and running for atlease 1 year and a min. of 75 gallon sug. 120 gallon. No nitrates, nitrites, or other bad mojo things. The other truth about starfish is that no one truely knows what starfish eat. So keep all this in mind the next time you go into a petstore and see one of these guys for sale.
Things to look for when you are picking one out:
-No white or brown marks coming off of it what so ever.
-be sure that it has been there for at least a week. to many transfurs to fast will kill them too.
-ask the sal. that is one thing they are very sensitive to is changes to sal.
-make sure that there are no big bumps in it. If any starfish in the system has bumps on it don't buy one from that place that is a very bad snail.
-have them put the starfish in a big bag and only 1/4 full of water.

After all this you should have sucess with a star fish and just rember size is not an indicator of age. Hope this helps you out. It is a better answer than what I osted above.

[chrisl1]

Glad I asked, more information is always better than less. Thanks.....