Birdsnest, stylophora, and pocillopora are all from the pocilloporidae family. Odds are this star will eat all three just fine. All are extremely easy to care for, and grow extremely fast. Green birds nest is sometimes free at an LFS, it grows that fast.
How to feed your corallivore
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Any updates on how this is going?
So at least your star has a taste for some of the easiest and fastest growers in the SPS family. pocillopora, birdsnests, and stylos grow like crazy. Pocillopora has been known to take over some tanks believe it or not. If you kept a separate tank with some blasting lights and high flow, you could keep a nice growing stock of these. Just keep alk elevated and calcium stable around 400-450 and those three will grow like weeds. Even better, is you can find varieties of these very cheap, and most LFS bring them in constantly.
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Hello! Haven't been very active on r2r as a whole but I took a quick look at the forum yesterday. Here are some main points and observations I've made between my inactivity and today:
1) Totally unresponsive to montipora. I've tried to place him on the cap and he's even "seastarred" over the frag numerous times. It is currently my only surviving sps as the tank went through a bit of an algae bloom where it was highly unkempt, causing most of the small digi frags to die off.
2) He's currently in a fasting period, I haven't been able to find any pocillopora damicornis locally in time (a big box pet store got them in, but they sold out or died when I got there). My next option is to either consult a facebook group again or buy a variety of sps online, but I dont find myself pressed for time considering a sea star's metabolism, so I've been saving up for the shipping alongside other expenses.
3) He's grown a taste for coral. My zoas and sun coral are untouched, but I lost a gorgonian to his stomach a while ago. I came home to the tissue half off of the branches. RIP.
4) Is there anywhere I can find cheap, ugly frags that won't cost an arm and a leg from coral vendors that sell to those looking to grow and keep? I'm in a bit of a unique situation here, lol.
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I have a separate tank (a family member's tank). There were complications with a different separate tank I was going to set up for myself, as it was a school tank and I have yet to receive word on its funding. My only issue is this family member would need some persuading and keeps a high bioload tank with kessil a80s, although the tank is pretty shallow (less than 12inches) so I imagine PAR would be slightly better. I just need a source for *a* frag before I can get to growing, so I'm going to stop by a big box pet store that has gotten pocillopora damicornis in before and see how they are with coral shipments
You are running into the part of why people dont keep coral eating stars. It is very hard to keep up with, if you dont have a coral frag tank constantly growing the food for the star. Odds are you do not need this exact species. Id put my dollar that it would eat any stylo, birdsnest as well. And it is by no means affordable to buy small frags to feed it snacks. These stars can eat ALOT of coral. Id be willing to bet, if you had a colony of stylo, probably 6-7 inches tall, and 6-8 inches wide, it wouldnt last this star a week. And that colony would take months to grow that size, if not a year.
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Well aware, but I wasn't under the impression of the star being a coral eater when I got it. The post I made asking for its ID was a post I made because I thought it would be a difficult star to ID. Chances are, if I donate it to any of my LFSs, I'm confident they won't provide for this sea star.
Oh you are for sure right, they wont care for it. It will just waste away and die.
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Which isn't to say they don't care about animals. It's costly to provide for this sea star (also not to say I'm the best caregiver for this sea star) and they don't really have any incentives for caring for this sea star as nobody will want it. This sea star was shipped from the other side of the world, so I have no choice but to try to care for it until the end of its lifespan, even if I have to sacrifice some coral for it.
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I'm confident that this sea star could be having a better life, but the most I can do right now is make a plan to get as close to that better life as possible. I'm going to see if I can get any pocilloporidae family coral and grow it out in the mentioned tank. If it fares well, I will take a small chunk and feed it to the sea star every now and then depending on its growth. As my situation is right now, it's better than nothing.
Thats a very good philosophy to have, But i think the right course of action is to start your own coral farm LOL.
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Honestly, I’m not sure. You might be able to ask around on the forum here and see if someone has some overgrowing their tank right now that you could take off their hands; similarly, there are always a few reefers who have to trim their corals back and get rid of the frags because their tanks are at capacity - a lot of these are literally willing to just give their frags away since the other option is to trash them. Beyond that, local reefers are probably your best bet for cheap frags.
Personally, I’d see if you could source some frags those ways, but - if you can’t - you could try reaching out to some vendors and seeing if you could get some discounts on a bulk order of just Pocillopora or something.
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