What is It.

[EmilyB]

http://www.members.shaw.ca/beans666/Unknown.JPG

It came in a bunch of recently purchased algae. :neutral:

[Canadian Man]

It's a magical new form of soft SPS :razz:
As you know Deb I can't really help you with the ID but I wanted to comment you on the great pic of the mystery item :cool:

[EmilyB]

Thanks Jonathan,

It has those anemone traits.....so weird..
:neutral:

[Delphinus]

Chewed up xenia that's trying to regrow?

[barry c]

Hi EmilyB,

i bought a green tree that had a few zoos attached to it that are simular to your picture. on the rock there were 3 of these little critters. we tried an extensive search and spoke to Anthony Calfo on them. while i can't find the correspondence with him about them, i can give you my experience with them.

Anthony identified them as a type of anemone. they don't get much bigger than in your picture. they readily take any type of food and split like an anemone. they will also release their hold on the rockand float around and resettle in different spots around your tank. in about 3 months after feeding them once a day i had about a dozen of them. i stopped directly feeding them at this time. about a month later, i noticed the tank wasn't looking up to par and the critters had grown to about 20 in numbers. after some water changes i still wasn't sure why my tank was looking so poor. well, we peeled the little anemones of the rocks and got rid of them. after a couple of weeks the tank started to look better. and after some more water changes and a few more weeks, the tank was back to normal. This is in a 50 gallon tank with a DSB and about 40lbs of live rock.

now, i'm no expert, but i think that with the amount of anemones that i had, they were releasing toxins and causing the problems i was having with the rest of my corals.

on the other hand, i gave Flame*Angel one six or seven months ago, and it has only split twice in her 120 gallon without any direct feeding.

Later
Barry

[christyf5]

Hairy mushroom. :mrgreen:

[AJ_77]

Nano!

[EmilyB]

Hehe...

Thanks Barry. It's in my crab tank so maybe a good place for it for now.

I thought hairy mushroom too Christy, but it has the foot of an anemone, and crawled up the rock to get on top of it. :confused:

Tony, not xenia stumps, I know those from Spikes tank..... :mrgreen:

I assumed it would be something bad since I got it for free after a lengthy "discussion" about it being attached to the macro I bought... :lol:

[Bob I]

Have you tried the Hitchiker FAQ, or possibly Dr. Ron :question: The picture is very good, so I would think someone would have an idea. :eek:

[sumpfinfishe]

Hi Deb,
I would have to agree with Christy :mrgreen:
I don't know if you remember, but Al my roomie had two huge hairy mushrooms in his reef. When they were smaller they looked exactly the same as your picture, as they grew the base simply spread more laterally on the rock and the actual tops of these :evil: things grew to about 9" in diameter before when were removed last month by chiseling off two chunks of rock.

[barry c]

these things won't get any bigger than an inch. they behave like an anemone, they eat, move and split the same as anenomes do.

[ABreefkpr]

Could be a type of mushroom. Does it flatten out at all Deb. If it is a mushroom it should cover it's base. If it grows a stalk first and then spreads out well :question: Maybe Tony has something there with the Xenia theory.

Keith

[EmilyB]

The thing is I have hairy mushrooms and although in some ways it resembles them, it behaves much differently.

It looks exactly the same a week later as it did above. And turns up in a new spot pretty much every day. I've seen it detach and go travelling.
:smile:

[Van down by the river]

Hello Emily,
Your picture is blurry, so it's hard to tell.Tell me if I am right: It has a cream overall color. It has small clusters of greenish "grapes/balls" around the perimeter? If so I've had this before.

It is a Thalassianthus aster

It's a small colonial anemone, it reproduces quite easily and can become a problem in a well fed tank. treat it the same as Aptasia.
I had one, then two, then three, you get the idea. I don't feed that tank heavily so it's population hasn't exploded, but if it got more brine or mysis I could see it easily taking off.