Finally fed my Brittle Star,with a problm of course.

[jbjints]

Hi,
I finally fed my starfish tonight, I fed him a silverside with a skewer and he instantly grabbed it. The problem is that the piece I gave him was about 2 inches long and as of now he is holding on to it but not eating it, it is probably to big, do starfish eat instantly or do they take there time? I am probably going to have to stab the piece with a skewer tomorrow night, will this be a problem? I will then feed him a smaller piece, I am not sure if this is ok, please let me know (removing the piece he is holding on to is what I am worried about).

Thanks,
Joe

[eukaryote]

It'll probably be okay. He'll most likely just chew on it for a while til he can get it all down, or 'in' rather. Mine does the same thing whenever he gets a piece of food that won't fit into his um...stomach or whatever brittle stars have.

[Rick O]

I would let him keep it. He'll eat it when he's ready. I have a red serpent star and he eats whole shrimp that you wouldn't think he could possible get into his mouth. Afterwards you can see a large lump in his body that's the shrimp.

HTH, Rick

[ophiuroid]

He should be good, though how big is the brittlestar? Brittlestars will take their time eating bit by bit, chewing away, and can distend their disk quite a bit to fit such a meal into their stomach (which is basically all they've got!). It usually does take a little while for them to finish a nice big meal. If he really wasn't hungry, he would probably just ditch the food.

Just for fun, here is a not too close up picture of the mouth of an ophiuroid ;) ...where you can see the cool little teeth like structures they munch with. On the other side of the 'black hole" of the mouth is the stomach. They don't have a terribly complex digestive system!

http://home.att.net/~ophiuroid/images/scolopenven.gif