Marble Sea Starfish: Complete Care Guide
- Oct 17, 2021
- Anshika Mishra
- 1964 0 0
If you are planning to add something new to your aquarium, then Marble Sea Star might be the answer to your question. Also, popular as the Red Tile Starfish, they are pretty popular in the reef-keeping hobby. In this article, we will discuss everything you need to know about this absolutely beautiful creature.
Introduction
PRICE: You will normally spend about $30 to get one of these in your tank.
TANK SIZE: With Starfish, the size of the tank doesn't matter, especially with these, as they don't get too large. It is mainly about keeping a good food source and keeping the levels right.
CARE LEVEL: They can be moderate. There are some key things that you need to pay attention to when taking care of a starfish.
TEMPERAMENT: They are a very peaceful Starfish when roaming the tank. They are not like a chocolate chip starfish that can almost be like a bulldozer pushing things over and eating corals. But the Red Marbles are very peaceful and are great to have.
REEF SAFE: Yes! It is always tough sometimes to find a starfish with great color that also does well in a reef tank, and this is the perfect one for your reef tank. They are really good about not messing with your corals, and they go right past them. But, they are not bad about knocking things over; they go in between everything and clean up.
ORIGIN: They do come from Indonesia.
Water Parameter
- SALINITY: 1.023-1.025
- dKH: 8-12
- pH: 8.1-8.4
- TEMPERATURE: 72-78
NOTE: You want to make sure that no fluctuations are occurring with these levels because it can hurt the Starfish. Also, make sure you are not doing any copper dosing with the Starfish in the tank. They will immediately not make it if you were to dose this.
Appearance
MAXIMUM SIZE: They can get about 5-inches in size by the end of their life from one end to the other. So, this one is great to have if you don't have a super large tank, and you don't want one to get overbearing in there.
COLORS: It is a big reason why everyone loves this Starfish. They are bright red with white spots all over them that make them look like a kitchen tile floor on top of them.
Diet
They are an omnivore. So, both algae and meaty food will be eaten by these fish. So, they are going to be looking on a rock for algae throughout the day, and they are going to be eating leftovers on the sand bed if any of your fish have missed some food, and they run around on top of that.
They are also good at spot feed. So, if you get little frozen shrimp from the Grocery store, you can cut them up into little peace and stick them right below one of its arms, and it will bring those tentacles out to push that shrimp all of the ways down to its mouth in the middle.
You know that they are getting some good nutrition in their diet.
Compatibility
You can have multiple fish in one tank as long as you have enough for them to eat. So make sure you have plenty of algae supply and food for being food.
They can be mixed with other sea starfish as well. So, if you have a Blue Lynchia and want to add the Red Tile, they will do great together.
They are great at eating hair algae and are good about eating detritus as well. They will make your sand bed and rock look clean and beautiful.
Give them nice thick sand bottom with plenty of live rocks for them to climb and graze on because they are either on your glass or they are on your rocks looking for food, and they constantly move around the tank.
Acclimating
Acclimate is the most important part of Sea Stars. It takes about four times the normal fish. So, therefore, you need to accommodate them for four hours minimum as it will allow them and their bodies to get used to the water change if the temperature difference or salinity levels or any other kind of levels that very not matching when it was shipped.
Starfish cannot touch air. So, the best thing to do is whatever bag it comes in, make sure it is sunken underwater before it comes out of the bag, and do the same and put them in your tank. So, many times, people will get bowls, and you can scoop them while still underwater, transfer them over to the top of your tank, sink them and pull them out.
Tip
It is recommended for a tank to be at least a year old before introducing Starfish in there. It allows them to have a great food source that has been growing for a year, and your levels are less likely to be changing especially when you first start a tank, let it go good for a year and then jump into the Starfish world, and add one of these in your tank.
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