White sand starfish

Sold as the white sand starfish, Archaster typicus is a sand-sifting sea star from shallow Indo-Pacific flats. It is pale sand-coloured with darker banding along five tapering arms, and spends most of its time half-buried, ploughing slowly through the top layer of substrate and surfacing across the sand or glass at intervals. It is one of the few sea stars that pairs up openly, males riding above females for long periods.

Aquarium care

• Feeds by sifting sand for microfauna, detritus and organic film, so it needs an established tank with a deep, fine sand bed.
• Depletes sand bed life quickly in small tanks and then slowly starves. This is the usual reason they are lost, and it happens over months rather than days.
• Only worth keeping over a genuinely large area of mature sand, or with deliberate supplementary feeding at the substrate.
• Sensitive to salinity swings and rapid changes, so acclimatise slowly.
• Peaceful toward fish and corals, though it will disturb anything sitting loose on the sand.

It suits a mature reef or fish-only system with a large, deep sand bed and calm tankmates such as clownfish, cardinalfish and gobies. Avoid it in nano tanks, bare-bottom systems and anything set up recently. Stock rotates; local pickup at our Lethbridge store. Browse saltwater livestock.