Chocolate chip star

Care at a glance

Overview

The chocolate chip star is one of the hardier, easier sea stars, but it belongs in a fish-only tank rather than a reef.

Caring for the chocolate chip star

Keep the chocolate chip star in a fish-only tank with live rock, never a reef. It is a slow-moving predator of soft and stony corals, clam mantles, anemones, sponges, tube worms and other sessile invertebrates. Give it at least 53 gal (200 L), with a soft sand floor to roam and rockwork it can go around rather than climb.

Hold the water at 75 to 81°F (24 to 27°C) with a pH of 8.1 to 8.4. Give it the same slow drip acclimation as any other sea star. It is tough once settled, but a sudden salinity or pH swing during introduction can still kill it.

It scavenges detritus and leftover food, and it readily takes chopped shrimp, clam, squid or silverside a couple of times a week. Its slow, plodding pace makes it easy prey for boisterous or predatory fish such as triggerfish and puffers. Choose peaceful or moderately active tank mates that will leave it alone.

Good to know

The chocolate chip star is named for the rows of dark, cone-shaped tubercles on its tan to reddish-orange body. They look like chocolate chips pressed into a cookie. It belongs to the family Oreasteridae, the cushion stars, and other trade names include horned sea star and horned starfish. Like its relatives, it feeds by pushing its stomach out through its mouth and over its food. It digests soft tissue outside its body, then draws the liquefied meal back inside. That lets it eat prey far larger than its mouth could swallow. It is heavily collected for the dried curio and souvenir trade in parts of Southeast Asia. Along with aquarium collection, that pressure has measurably thinned wild populations in some areas.

In the wild

The chocolate chip star is native to shallow, sheltered sand and mud flats and seagrass beds rather than exposed hard reef. Its range spans the Indo-Pacific from Thailand to Samoa, north to Japan and south to New Caledonia. It moves slowly across open sand, hunting for food.

Common questions

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