Starfish/Nudi/Slug ID?

[B1uenose]

Had one of these fairly early on in my tank...I now have about 5....they are v small - (size of your little fingernail) and appear to be pretty harmless and are actually quite attractive (nice orangy bits!!) but I'd love a positive ID!!

Thanks...

http://reefcentral.com/gallery/data/500/167296untitled2.JPG

[NirvanaFan]

looks like an asterina star to me.

[papagimp]

Bingo...Asterina

[dbuesking]

i am new to this hobby also but i started out with one little star about a quarter inch round. now i have about ten. one the size of a quarter. i was told by my LFS to get rid of them. they have no enemys. you can add one kind of shrimp i think to eat them but when they are gone the shrimp will die of starvation.

[NirvanaFan]

harlequin shrimp will eat starfish. There are some species of asterina stars that will eat corals. I've never had a problem with these stars though. I would wait to see if they eat corals, then get rid of them if they do.

[papagimp]

If you can add a shrimp, (harlequin by the way) then they do have known enemies uh? :D Some of these guys can be bad, going around eating stuff like coralline algae, some will feed on certain coral species, ect. ect., I've got oodles in most my tanks and none have ever been seen eating on anything i didn't want them to. Don't have the bad guys in my tank luckily. They can reproduce very quickly, I pull em out at random to rid my tank of "too many" but never tried to erradicate them, another nifty hitchiker that I don't mind.

[B1uenose]

They have not looked predatory at all so far...although one did hitch a lift on the back of a turbo snail for a while which was quite amusing....
Mostly on the back-glass but one does roam around my live rock...

[NirvanaFan]

He was probably just cleaning the snails shell. Kind of like having someone scratch your back. I think these stars look pretty neat and welcome them in my tank. I would probably feel differently if they were munching on some of my corals though.