Gosh, this keeps coming up...reader beware...here is another passionate plea for brittlestars!
I would suspect that the reason you hear only bad about them is because only people who have things go wrong with them post to the boards. Few people write in to say- "have a green brittle, hasn't bothered a thing." They only write when something goes wrong. Green brittles are efficient predators which will, if hungry, catch live food...even if it happens to be expensive. They are misleadingly sold as scavengers...but large one's will need more than what they can scavenge to survive, unless there are a lot of dead/sick fish in the system. They must be kept very well fed with shrimp, fish, etc, hopefully provided by us and not the other tank residents! Such predatory events are part of the risk of keeping the "miniature ecosystem" so many strive to have.
I definitely agree! Avoid the green brittles...they should be left in the wild to do what is instinctive. IMO They should not be sold in the aquarium trade...yet the supply and demand remains high. How can this be, if they are such trouble? I still believe most people have no problems with them- just as many people have very different experiences with particular types of fish.
The only reason I feel they should not be sold is that irresponsible reefkeepers will buy them and then toss them when they catch something...or simply because someone said they
might catch something. In themselves, they are not terribly expensive, so people often have no trouble tossing them when considering the higher monetary value of other residents in the tank.
We have a responsibility to take care of animals that are
harvested from the wild for our enjoyment(which should be a sobering thought), especially when they display behaviors that are no different than those they display in the wild.
Just my (passionate) opinion....
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Brittlestars!!
http://home.att.net/~ophiuroid
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