hey everyone, need some help, was wondering if it would be time to add a few thing's to the tank for my bobtail, i was wondering about a starfish, it sound's ridiculous but i think it's worth a try to see and note his reaction's toward it, i wonder if it's safe or not, he has had a hard time getting accustomed to the tank and the environment, i wonder if it wil be to hard for him to adjust to another addition to the tank(it might be too stressful for him),i'm just a bit timid on this situation, like most ceph's he tend's to be curious about his surrounding's and like any ceph he'll go check it out, i wonder if him checking out a starfish to see what it is or what it's about might do him harm.next up some playtoy's,hehe.
-dave

Hi Dave

cuttlefish i have had never seemed interested in starfish or in fact, much else in the tank except crustaceans and fish :)

I think that the bobtail will be similar in that a star or two wont hold any interest past the first few hours and its a good idea as a star helps to keep the tank clean. I'd probably avoid a burrowing star though as that might annoy the bobtail.

Starfish don't seem to bother my cephs i kept one with zoidberg an another one with an octo.
Zoidberg got a little excited when i first added him in the tank and must have thought it was food. However, after seeing it not moving, he probably assumed it was not alive.

yeah i suppose it wouldn't be interesting after a few hours, it might annoy and stress it, don't want that to happen, on the other hand my o.vulagirs loves play toy's and he loves to do little adventures, i have a few caves/mazes that I made myself with some pvc pipes, it work's out fine, i got toy's like little plastic shark's, treasure chest's, and scuba diver's, the basic cosmetic addition's you could add to any aquarium, he just loves it. :)

One thing not to add are the spikey diadem urchins, when i added two of them to the cuttle tank they tried to pick them up and got jagged... also i had to remove one from a bimac tank as it was doing the same thing trying to steal the urchins food...

I've had great luck with a small fromia sp. star, a few brittle stars/serpent stars of various types, sand-sifting stars, and blue tuxedo urchins (short-spined and not terribly sharp, plus beautiful.) If you're feeling particularly adventurous, you can also probably get away with a sea cucumber. They're touchy and have a bad reputation of killing all vertebrates in a tank if they get upset or die, but most seem to believe they only threaten vertebrates.

rusty

:goofysca: , i think i'll just stick to simple toy's then, don't want my pet's getting jabbed, definetly don't want to add the infamous sea cucumber, :wink: ,hehe.

The only time i have ever seen a sea apple do well was when i had one in with the cuttlefish. It grew a lot in that time and it obvioulsy fed well on the mess that the cuttlefish left. It sat near th efilter grabbing bits of crab that floated by...

All went well until the cuttles died and then about 2 months later the sea apple died... it was hard to feed the apple without the cuttles and it wandered all over the tank, didnt seem happy without its cuttlefriends food

All went well until the cuttles died and then about 2 months later the sea apple died... it was hard to feed the apple without the cuttles and it wandered all over the tank, didnt seem happy without its cuttlefriends food
sorry to hear about the trajic loss, i really appreciate the reply's colin. :D

your welcome!

That must have been about over a year ago now...