Sand sifting starfish

Care at a glance

The sand sifting starfish lives largely buried and pushes along beneath the sand, eating worms, small clams and other bottom life as it goes. You will therefore rarely see it above the sand; you will see its tracks as faint furrows in the substrate.

Therein lies exactly the problem: in most tanks it strips the sand bed bare within a few months and then starves unnoticed. Only in a large, long-running system with a deep, living sand bed is it in its element; otherwise even one specimen is too many.

Good to know

• Digger — needs fine sand
• Needs a mature, stable tank

Best not combined with

• Harlequin shrimpHymenocera picta

Related species

• Brittle starOphiuroidea sp.
• Tuxedo urchinMespilia globulus
• Green brittle starOphiarachna incrassata
• Porcelain anemone crabNeopetrolisthes maculatus
• Emerald crabMithraculus sculptus
• Feather duster wormSabellastarte spectabilis