mini Brittle Starfish found in my nano???

[mchotdog]

i was cleaning my nano today and found 4 of those animals.
i never noticed them in my nano until today.and i found 3 of them in the crushed coral when cleaning the substrate with a gravel cleaner. and 1 hiding in the GSP. i am sure there are a lot more of them hiden.
they look like white brittle starfish. but they are really really small.only aobut 0.5CM in size.
do any of you guys know what they are called? and will they grow up to be bigger starfish?
thanks
derek

[salvini55]

mini brittle star, Im pretty sure they multiply by fission or "Budding". I have one in my tank. When i was at the Shedd Aquarium in chicago, some of the tanks had hundreds upon hundreds!

[Vincenzo.]

they are good. biggest they get is around 1'' +

[OttawaReefer]

What kind of brittle? 

I think I have a mini one in a piece of live rock.  I can see the little white with black striped legs sticking out from a whole in the small piece of rock.  The legs can't be longer than about .5 to 1cm long.

Still, to find four when you didn't put any in is pretty cool.

[mchotdog]

lol. i dont even know where they came from. i saw online stores selling them for 24.95 for 6 of them... what a rip off!

[Vincenzo.]

they are very common hitchhiker on LR.

[OttawaReefer]

are the ones in his nano a different kind?  I've seen some that are very large, but you mentioned that they only get up to about an inch.

All the ones that I have seen have the central disk about one inch across but with the legs they are about three to four.

[Vincenzo.]

baby brittles u wont normally see them all, ull just see some arms swaying in the water. As this is how they feel, by grabbing det.

Other brittles get quite lrg, to 16'' +

[Sharbuckle]

ive got TONS in my 20g, i found 5 tiny ones living in my mag float! haha little buggers

[bongo]

I remember reading something on RC and it said that 5% of these mini brittle starfish species where not good... eat coral