• Looking to buy a cephalopod? Check out Tomh's Cephs Forum, and this post in particular shares important info about our policies as it relates to responsible ceph-keeping.

Starfish in an octopus tank

Nancy

Titanites
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Although some people have successfully kept starfish (seastars) in octopus tanks, I would recommend it only in the case of a very small starfish.

Starfish can be problematic to keep under the best of circumstances. The alternatives, serpent stars, can grow large and aggressive. Brittlestars are the best choice for a ceph tank.

If you do keep an octopus with a starfish, make sure that the octopus is considerably larger than the starfish. Can a starfish kill an octopus? We had one incident here with a Tonmo member's octopus where it appeared the starfish trapped and killed the octopus. Later I found references to and a photo of an octopus being eaten by a starfish in the Monterey Bay Aquarium book, Octopus and Squid, by James C. Hunt.

Nancy
 
Nancy,
I think it depends a lot on the type of starfish. The Bahama star that AM kept eats differently and consumes different food than a common Caribbean or Linkia (both algae eaters that often starve) and the Crown of Thorns, of course, is a totally undesireable poisonous menance. My oldest living creature is a green serpent who could never keep his arms. He was housed with Octane and finally (after litterally years) grew healthy arms but then I chose to remove him from OhToo's tank as he would pester OhToo for food and we felt it stressed the octopus.

All that said, I have kept multiple Thorny's with both the mercs and hummelincki with absolutely no issue for either the star or the octo. They don't trap their prey and are marvolous scavengers that leave the softies alone (I have read that they will nibble on some of the harder corals but I don't keep many hard corals and don't keep the Thorny's in my reef so I have no experience one way or the other). These are not overly large starfish and are slow growing. I have to give them my biggest thumbs up when it comes to octo clean-up crew.
 
dwhatley;129049 said:
Nancy,
I think it depends a lot on the type of starfish. The Bahama star that AM kept eats differently and consumes different food ...

AM is the third person familiar form of Animal Mother :sagrin:

This is the post eliciting Animal Mother's reaction.
 

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