Our blue starfish is decomposing :-(

[Gz28]

this is my second try with a blue starfish. Gerwin remember when i asked if i need to drip for 2 hours and you said 1 was plenty? what do you think of this article. http://www.thefishguy.org/blue-linkia-starfish.html
both elvis and i dripped ours for an hour at about 2 drops per second the legs on both of ours are starting to rot away. Im pretty sure they are not going to live long. Mine has only moved about 6 inches since i put him in the tank. I would love to have one of these in my tank but I think i am about to give up on keeping one alive.
Do they require light? i dont think they do.

[Gerwin]

well, I am not sure the 1/2 hr of acclimation made the difference, I can tell you they did not fall apart in 24 hours in my tank.

There are many ideas about why this happens (including osmotic or pH shock, bacterial and fungal infections, etc.), but unfortunately no one really knows what the ultimate cause of this problem is

I would go on to further wonder if your two hrs of acclimation at that drip rate may have been to slow, another words not 2 drops per second but 4 or 8 or what ever it takes to make a difference in the overall water level in the acclimation bucket. When they came in to us we give them about 1 hour but the drip rate is faster than yours and I usually am looking for 3-4 times the original water in the container.
Now is that the best way? I do not know , I have not read nor discussed this with any body on forum blogs, it is what works for us here ( knock on wood) so why it crashed on you two....not sure as you went even longer. unfortunately no one really knows I will say that before I started that drip to ours we also had them fall apart over night back in the day.

[C-21 USAF]

Mine died too... FWIW I acclimated him for about an hour

He was one of about 6 things I got that day and the only one that died. He didn't decompose, just died...looks like his stomach is hanging out and smells horrible.

[Gerwin]

well maybe it was a bad lot, although they all appeared well here, not decomposing and all attached to walls, rocks etc.
I will order some more and get you three a 2nd chance to see if you can do better

[C-21 USAF]

Got my second one last night...all is well...Thanks Daddy G!

[Redfish]

I don't know squat about starfish, but I saw the one in C-21s tank. They really are pretty nice looking. I went on you tube and showed them to my wife and she wants one, but told her I would have to do some checking on them to see if there are any down sides to them.

[Gz28]

My starfish is doing great....although i currently dont know where he has run off to now, he was there like 20 minutes ago... I dripped him @ about 3-4 drops per second for 1-1/2 hours. Thank you "Big Daddy DR.G" You are awesome, it is so nice to have such an awesome lfs that cares about their customers, we are all lucky to have you around. I wont even go into the bad experiences i have had, and heard about with the other lfs's around you and in slidell.

[Gz28]

I lost my starfish i think i know what happened though. i do not have a top off system on the big tank i was gone for a couple of days and alot of water evaporated, he appeared to be doing "ok" I poured water in the sump all at once, and he died a couple days later. I think he couldnt handle the salinity going up then back down so quickly??? he might have made it if i would have thought to add a little water at a time, Maybe. Redfish if my theory is right make sure you have a water top off for your tank, and make sure nothing in your tank changes very much and very quickly, salinity,temp,ph....etc before you get one.