Sand sifting Star
 

Ok so a week or so ago i saw a post on here saying how bad the sand sifting star was and i currently have one in my tank(24g aquapod) which i now want to get rid of but my gf wont let me(shared tank).
could someone please explain why they are bad as to help me explain to her

They eat every living thing out of the sand bed and starve. I ignored the warnings and my tank suffered a huge setback because of it. Even a 100G tank is too little as I can confirm.

I will concur with AZDesertRat. I had one in my 55g reef when I first started it and it sucked the whole sand bed dry. Even today there is no pod life or anything living in my sand bed. Needless to say the poor starfish died of starvation and was half-eaten by my pistol shrimp. Without any life in your sand bed your whole tank will suffer.

is there anyway of adding life back into the sanbed? like with a cup of sand from a different tank?

i dont know about another cup of sand but not having a sifting star would help! Tell your gf that if you keep the starfish you may loose your ENTIRE tank. goodluck (you might want to replace it with a fromia star to make her happy;)

Explain to her that the poor starfish is going to starve! She doesnt want that does she? fromias are prettier any ways.

All starfish die of stravation! Well, 99.9% do anyway. 18-30 months is the standard time. I discourage anybody from getting them. I believe the possible exception is a choc. chip star, but they eat everything.

Mine died in 4 weeks.. Cleaned the sandbed and then died.. I have 5" sandbed in a 75 gallon tank.. The star was 3" in diameter. It also decimated my pod population.

I love starfish also but the sandsifter just is not good for aquariums.

It took a full 6 months of reseeding with cups of live sand from friends and numerous bottles of live Oceanpods to get it anywhere back to normal and to this day I still do not have the mini brittle stars or red spaghetti worms like I used to have.

I agree
 

I must say I agree ......

I had on ein my tank at first.........It did not starve but it did eat everything in the sand bed ....to the point that I had no pods or at least none in eye sight.

My LFS sold it to me lied about it and would not tkae it back......
I gave it to a friend he has a 200G and to my knowlegde its still doing okay ... 1 year later.

Does anyone have a pic of Sand shiftting stars?

This is one I had lasted about 14 months in my 90 and I was running a deep sand bed and had an area that I constantly filled with new sand from a another tank where the sole purpose was to create live sand. They are pretty bad for your tank in general IMO. I have had two ,one in my 55, and both starved. Watching them die is pretty painful as they literally start to fall apart :(.
[IMG]http://inlinethumb45.webshots.com/11948/2208884960048177406S600x600Q85.jpg[/IMG]
Its up to you but they will kill the sand bed pretty quickly a small tank. They eat constantly :(.

Hope that helps,

Henry