Red Serpent Sea Star - Unknown sp.
Picture taken February 2000, Nikon Coolpix 950 digital camera, full flash

Purchased: March 31st, 1998.

This is a typical serpent star fish sold in the aquarium trade. They are great scavengers feeding on uneaten food, detris, debris, etc. Usually they stay hidden during the day with just the arms exposed. It's a hungry sea star that comes running out looking for food like this.

Although direct feeding is probably not needed if you feed your tank enough, I do direct feed mine small chunks of "silversides"--small marine minnow like fish common found in the frozzen food section of your pet store.

I have 4 serpent sea stars in my tank. I plan on getting more. Some authors like Svein A. Fossa and Alf Jacob Nilsen (of The Modern Coral Reef Aquarium book series) recommend as many as 25 per 100 gallons of tank size. I think that is a bit much, but 5 to 10 of them would be fine for me.

The bottom left arm is actually a regrown arm. This serpent star got caught under an LPS coral skeleton and tore the entire arm and a quarter of the oral surface off exposing the "organs" inside. It wrapped its other arms around the area to protect itself and stayed hidden for quite a while. I fed it alot of sinking algae pellets and very small chunks of silversides. Within a month it did a full recovery of the oral surface and started to regrow an arm. The arm that was ripped off died. It was not able to regrow into a new sea star.