choclate chip starfish

Question
our choc. chip has a hole in him between 2 legs. It looks bad. he's still alive but we put him into a smaller floating baby fish thing in the tank so the hermit crabs leave him alone. He still moving but not much. How do you humanly put them down? I know he's got to be suffering. Just makes me sick. I loved to sit and watch him. We had been testing the water all the time the nitrates were high and we couldn't get them down. We took the tank apart today and cleaned it good. and put new sand in. When we got the tank it was a mess. the coral was black and had only half the water in it. The people didn't take care of it at all. So we tried to leave part of the water in and only add the rest but it still was high in nitrates. They were feeding frozen dead fish. The hermit crabs are very aggressive. not sure if they were not fed or it was because of the frozen fish being fed.

Answer
Hello Linda,

sorry to hear about your chocolate chip... I would really wonder if his wound is mortal/fatal or not.. .they are pretty hardy and do regenerate limbs... so it is possible that he will recover, but you can not hold him inthe little container as he will starve inthere...

IT would be good to find out what or why he has a hole in him thoug to prevent reoccurance...

Maybe if you feed teh hermits more they will eat him less???

Also, if you dont have corals, nitrates arent that critical/important...  taking out the sand/substrate might have stirred up a bunch of junk and really started a new tank cycle again...

I would measure ammonia and make sure if you detect any to do more and bigger water changes.

maybe you can tell me a bit about your tank, how big, what is in it, what type of filtration, what type of lighting, what tests you have done on the water etc...

But, i fyou really want to 'put him down' the best way is to freeze them... place them in a ziploc and put him to sleep in thefrezer for a day, then dispose of him...  this will not only put him down but if he had any parasite or hitchiker or anything else that you wouldnt want to accidently release into the evironement/landfil would be safe...

good luck


bill