How to keep feather starfish and some other bits about them

Feather stars(Comasteridae) or for the old school aquarium keepers,(me)we call them crinoids.

Near on every collecting trip over the last 16 years by our Brisbane aquarium club and my own 14 plus before that,we have seen many varieties of feather stars and we have found that the types mentioned on the commercially caught wholesale lists are not always the hardy creatures as described.

The colobometra and cenometra,to name a few are sometimes reffered to as the hardy varieties.

This we have found not to be entirely accurate.

The Comanthina schlegeli and general Comanthinas seem to,for the larger part,be easier to keep for many reasons i could not be bothered going into.

These crinoids (feather stars)are incredibly mass produced in huge numbers and could never be affected by any commercial or private collecting and this is really only understood by those that regularly interact with them in the wild and have kept these creatures and have seen where and how they may live and anyone that understands planktonic dispersal as well.

Also you should be aware of the types of natural foods that seem to best suited to them.

In an aquarium the food source is mostly of a size a bit bigger than what is available as the planktonic food source that the ocean mainly provides as sustenance for the feather starfish.

The areas where we see the largest numbers and the most variations,is in the open ocean directly affected by run off from estuaries, but to far out to be overly affected by the flooding that occurs from these, from time to time, thus reducing the salinity of the close in reefs.

This can adversely affect the invert life forms as the bacteria resulting from low salinity events like these,can be fatal to most inverts,also by food reduction, but mostly by bacterial attacks and for most corals,reduced sunlight as well.

The main problem with these creatures in an aquarium is that they do not have a food storage area as part of them for the lean times as our fat cells provide for us and the flesh area of most creatures provides for them, even muscle areas will sustain a creature for a while when food is not available.

So we are left with a serious problem with trying to keep a feather star alive for the long term.

The best and simplest way to partly solve this dilemma is to use an auto feeder for these and pretty much all inverts,than mainly have it set to release the powdered invert foods at night, which is when most of the star fishes feeding occurs as this is when the meat eating planktonic creatures come out to feed on mainly the phytoplankton, which is a form photosynthesising dependant algae.

Now the food mix has to include some thing green so to speak, as the reason these lovely creatures do so well in non flood affected estuaries and inshore reefs is the abundance of phytoplankton going about its business of converting ours and most other life forms waste and silt.

This type of food has to be a part of there diet and this can be easily utilised by incorporating spirulina, dried kelp, these types of vitamin,mineral and nutrient rich foods in the mix.

Another important thing to remember is to use moisture absorbing crystals in a grillled secured container in with the powder mix or the auto feeder may become blocked.

These are a few of the nicer cloloured crinoids we catch and keep.

The first yellow Comanthina in the first three pics that follow is three months old and has grown quite a bit since its collection.








These were in the last tank three years back.





This is from Frazer island.