Starfish Invasion ! Good or Bad ?

[1wizz]

Hi all,
For just over a month I have noticed a few arms sticking out from the rocks, Mainly after an hour or so from the last feed up until the night lights come on.
Well today I have just completed a water change in my 350dt and :jaw-dropping: every rock I picked up (generally I don't disturb much normally) had at least 4 or more baby Brittle Starfish, at least i think they are babies, as I have not put anything in the dt for a long time :huh:

So where have they come from, is this a good thing, if they are babies is there a large Mother and Father somewhere? And is this the reason my Mandarin has gone AWOL for at least 2 weeks? (she was fit and fat but also over 5 years old, I had assumed natural causes)

I have removed a few and taken some pics but are these beneficial and should be left in or do I need to find the Daddy?

All my parameters are good with slightly high nates (20-30ppm) and SG at 1.023

 

[Conski]

wow you really do have alot LOL, no help from me sorry but this is interesting! you need a harlequin shrimp, dump all those stars back in there and theyll all be gobbled up in no time plus harlequins are the best

 

[Ara]

Wow... creepy... kinda reminds me of Aliens...

I second Conski... get something that will eat em up.. I am guessing some eggs came in with some of your rock or plants?

 

[melissadotson]

cool!!!!! i will take them..can you ship them to me?..LOL..

 

[1wizz]

Do we all agree this is a sign of good water quality? Because I bet if you wanted to breed such creatures intentionally you'd struggle.
Or am I just grabbing straws!

 

[Amphiprion]

Do we all agree this is a sign of good water quality? Because I bet if you wanted to breed such creatures intentionally you'd struggle.
Or am I just grabbing straws!

It has less to do with water quality (short of it being adequate for most invertebrates) and more to do with food sources. It means that you have at least have a reasonably productive community of macro-organisms. One step in the right direction of being more natural, if you ask me.

 

[DoctaQ]

i dont think harlequen shrimp would wanna eat them, supposedly bongo shrimp or something with a similar funny name eats brittle stars but i dont know that they will touch these little guys, for the most part unless you hate the look of them dont bother, theyre good detrivores anyways

 

[Ace25]

I have never found any reason to remove those micro brittle stars. They don't grow any bigger than what you see in the pictures and clean the rocks very good. Maybe wrasses eat them because I have 100's of them in my 29G and 0 in my 75G. I think they are good.