Chocolate chip starfish

Care at a glance

The chocolate chip starfish owes its name to the dark, cone-shaped knobs on its back, sitting like chocolate chips on a beige biscuit. It is one of the hardiest starfish for the aquarium and easier to keep than most of its relatives.

Reef safe it is not, however: it moves over corals, clams and anemones and digests them with its everted stomach. So keep it in a tank without corals, with a generous sand bed, and feed it deliberately with pieces of fish or mussel.

Good to know

• Preys on shrimp and snails

Best not combined with

• Harlequin shrimpHymenocera picta

Related species

• Blue Linckia starfishLinckia laevigata
• Pencil urchinEucidaris tribuloides
• Fromia starfish (orange marble)Fromia monilis
• Longspine urchinDiadema setosum
• Archaster sand starArchaster typicus
• Halloween hermit crabCiliopagurus strigatus