The Conical Spined Sea Star is a wildly underrated invertebrate. While the whole world thinks they want a Purple Linckia (and some of you experienced aquarists may) what most of you want is Echinaster sentus. They are wildly more durable than many other commonly available Sea Stars, absolutely gorgeous, and to top it all off are super useful! What more could you want?
They usually don't hide either, so they are out and about a lot. They'll spend their days and nights migrating around the tank, over rocks, across the substrate, even up the glass (which is really fun to see, when you get to see all their little “feet” moving them along.) This is also a great time to feed them because you can put small pieces of meaty food like Gamma Mysis, Brine, Tubifex, and even Mini-bloodworm next to their legs and they'll move the food toward their centrally located mouth. When they're on the glass, you can see the whole thing. As an omnivore grazing Star, they won't often need target feeding in large, established, and preferably heavily stocked aquariums where there is plenty of leftover food and fish waste, but in smaller tanks, or more sparsely stocked tanks, you should target feed your star at least a couple times a week. Keep giving them little morsels of meaty food until they stop taking them, then try it again in a couple days. If you see them losing weight, ramp up the feeding. If they aren't interested in your offerings, wait a day, or feed less per feeding. You can also utilize Nutramar Algae and Color Boost Shots and place one in the path of the Star, and they'll happily consume as much of it as they want, unless they fish get to it first.
They usually don't hide either, so they are out and about a lot. They'll spend their days and nights migrating around the tank, over rocks, across the substrate, even up the glass (which is really fun to see, when you get to see all their little “feet” moving them along.) This is also a great time to feed them because you can put small pieces of meaty food like Gamma Mysis, Brine, Tubifex, and even Mini-bloodworm next to their legs and they'll move the food toward their centrally located mouth. When they're on the glass, you can see the whole thing. As an omnivore grazing Star, they won't often need target feeding in large, established, and preferably heavily stocked aquariums where there is plenty of leftover food and fish waste, but in smaller tanks, or more sparsely stocked tanks, you should target feed your star at least a couple times a week. Keep giving them little morsels of meaty food until they stop taking them, then try it again in a couple days. If you see them losing weight, ramp up the feeding. If they aren't interested in your offerings, wait a day, or feed less per feeding. You can also utilize Nutramar Algae and Color Boost Shots and place one in the path of the Star, and they'll happily consume as much of it as they want, unless they fish get to it first.
