That was my other route..but not knowing how fast they will clean out a tank...i decided to stay away. Cant get a ball park estimate on how many they will consume per day. But given anecdotal evidence..they are pretty thourough and pretty efficient.I used to feed them to my rainbow nems. Not sure of this but I think it made them split more. Other than that I didn’t have any issues. I just had so many asterina‘s that I bought a Harlequin and he wiped them all out. But once he wipes them all out, he will die rather quickly without feeding him stars. Unfortunately I didn’t get a chocolate starfish in there in time. Some people have a hard time feeding a chocolate chip starfish to another critter in the tank or cutting their legs off to feed.