Welcome to the Photo Gallery Spotlight. Each
month we'll showcase a particularly nice aquarium photograph, taking the time to discuss
the identification and husbandry of the animal pictured as well as information relating to
the technical details of how the photo was taken. Readers are encouraged to send
images (and details on the organisms pictured, as well as the details of how they captured
the shot) they would like to submit for possible inclusion in this feature to terry@advancedaquarist.com . For submissions
that are published in Advanced Aquarist, the author will receive a $25.00 gift certificate
from one of our participating advertisers.
Nardoa
and Asterina spp Sea Stars
There
is some controversy over the Asterina
species sea stars, which can multiply to great numbers
in reef aquariums. Most aquarists report no
problems with them, but some claim that they eat
SPS corals and make every effort to remove them. There
are more than one species of Asterina
and it's speculated that some species may be
harmful. It's also speculated that the Asterina
sea stars will consume SPS corals once they reach a
certain density. I happened to put a Nardoa
species sea star into a small reef aquarium that
contains a large population of Asterina sea stars. I discovered that the Nardoa
sea star regularly consumed the Asterina
sea stars. The Nardoa
sea star san be a good biological control for those
aquarists that want to reduce their population of Asterina
sea stars.
The
pictures were taken as the Nardoa
was eating Asterina
sea stars on the glass walls of the aquarium. I
used a Fuji S1 digital SLR camera, with flash at
a shutter speed of 1/125 second and an aperture
of F16, to take the pictures.
