Help me identify please!!

[saltwater4life]

Does anyone know what this is it looks like 4 purple tentacle striped legs purple and white in my live rock when I target feed my nearby corals it curls in the rock please help.!!!

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[StirCrayzy]

Just the arms of a brittle star hiding in the rock. No worries, perfectly normal and harmless.
As with with most of our microfauna, their population rises and falls based on your system.

 

[saltwater4life]

I hate brittle stars darn I just got rid of a big one for eating my cleaner shrimp but I have never seen a purple and white brittle lol


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[StirCrayzy]

They come in lots of different colorations. Anything that small won't be a.killer.

 

[DianaKay]

I think it's a micro-brittle version & it's not going to grow big enough to do harm to any tank mates.
I have lots of them (mostly white but some red & white) and they've never gotten big.

 

[nanoreefing4fun]

+3 great members of cuc - micro brittle star

 

[Overlook Reef]

Great members of CUC.

 

[Mike Johnson]

I hate brittle stars darn I just got rid of a big one for eating my cleaner shrimp but I have never seen a purple and white brittle lol


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I don't think it's possible for a Brittle Star to kill a cleaner shrimp, maybe the notorious Green Brittle Star, but highly unlikely. Your cleaner shrimp must have died and then it cleaned it up.

 

[Snid]

Mike makes a good point. There have been many various stars, crabs, and even snails that people thought were not tank safe because they'd wake up and find them munching on a corpse. They simply assumed they killed the victim. In many of those cases, they were just doing their job, cleaning up the mess of a rotting corpse that died for other reasons.

 

[DianaKay]

I have just learned that the red & white micro-brittle stars get a good bit BIGGER than the small white ones...but they are still reef safe.
It's very rare to see them out when the lights are on. Not sure they get all the way out of the LR when the lights are off or not
Here are some BIGGER ones that were hiding in the chaeto in my refugium:

 

[saltwater4life]

For some reason there are only 4 legs that come out of the live rock and they are a bright purple and white stripeds horizontal I just can't seem to think its a brittle star bc I have never seen one this color


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[Oxylebius]

What you have are micro brittle stars. Over 2,000 species of brittle stars exist and they come in a variety of colors.

A good cuc are ones that eat anything that is dead in your tank so that the dead animal doesn't mess up you water quality. They didn't kill your shrimp, but were cleaning up the dead carcass, as any good cuc should do.

You are only seeing the legs that are poking out of the rocks, there are probably several of them, not just one. Also, once a micro brittle star looses a leg, it can grow it back, so a star with 3 or 4 legs can grow the lost legs back.