High Tide Aquatics

Id. Help

Hi All,
Trying to find out what this is? Not the best pic. The top is about the size of a quarter.

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brown/green playthoa.
banned at the club's frag swaps due to it's invasive nature (and really doesn't look that good).
very dangerous coral in that many people have gotten sick/ill from trying to remove mass amounts of them in very (sorry for anyone who fits this category) stupid ways due to the abundance of palytoxin in them.

But seriously, they have a bit of green to them, and if you hit them with nothing but actinic/blue light they do tend to fluoresce quite a bit more, they will grow in a mat over your rocks/sand/walls, and then when you want to remove them it's usually too late.
 
O great! another "undesirable" creature!!! I had no idea they were soo toxic. I gonna have to start a tank of unwanted creatures - Majanos, Aiptaisas, and now this guy. They can just fight it out and see who the sole survivor is :D
 
That's why I wouldn't start a tank with live rock. You never know what you're gonna get. Not the end of the world though. The good thing about reefing is most everything has some sort of solution or can be managed.


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Palythoas (aka button polyp) like the one you have there are a legit soft coral, sold by all fish stores as an appropriate starter coral. They grow easily and are easy to take care of. They don't sting other corals but they can crowd out slower corals. Some (can't tell which) do contain varying amounts of palytoxin, which is a seriously bad actor, but the incidence of injury to reefers is minuscule compared to how many people have these in their tanks, they are one of the most common corals. Just wear googles and gloves when handling. You are way more likely to get injured by the electrical work in your tank or using a step stool around your tank than by paly polyps.

If you don't like the look of them, they can be a serious nuisance because they grow well, and you could get rid of it now. Kind of like Xenia. But many people (like my wife and most non-reefers who look at the ones in my tank) like them more than most other corals, maybe because they haven't been told not to.


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Palythoas (aka button polyp) like the one you have there are a legit soft coral, sold by all fish stores as an appropriate starter coral. They grow easily and are easy to take care of. They don't sting other corals but they can crowd out slower corals. Some (can't tell which) do contain varying amounts of palytoxin, which is a seriously bad actor, but the incidence of injury to reefers is minuscule compared to how many people have these in their tanks, they are one of the most common corals. Just wear googles and gloves when handling. You are way more likely to get injured by the electrical work in your tank or using a step stool around your tank than by paly polyps.

If you don't like the look of them, they can be a serious nuisance because they grow well, and you could get rid of it now. Kind of like Xenia. But many people (like my wife and most non-reefers who look at the ones in my tank) like them more than most other corals, maybe because they haven't been told not to.


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I completely agree. If you are going to grow mostly soft coral, then there is nothing wrong with Palythoas, Xenia, Kenya Trees, and the like. IMO, it really depends on the corals you will grow, and the look that you want. I fixed the problem by having two display tanks, a softie tank, and an LPS/SPS reef.
 
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You can also add them to their own piece of rock and make sure that it doesn't touch any other rocks that you don't want them to spread to, like so.

There's a gap between the zoas and the orenji danae that is on the main rockwork there to prevent them from hopping over.

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I completely agree. If you are going to grow mostly soft coral, then there is nothing wrong with Palythoas, Xenia, Kenya Trees, and the like. IMO, it really depends on the corals you will grow, and the look that you want. I fixed the problem by having two display tanks, a softie tank, and an LPS/SPS reef.
I agree, and like I said in the other thread where the "doom and gloom" corals were mentioned, I had a soft coral tank that wasn't anything over the top crazy as far as corals and it was featured in a magazine (granted UK magazine), they absolutely can look fabulous, but you have to want that kind of tank from the get go. The big problem is you have all this advice of "beginner corals" and there are a large number of them that yes are great corals to start with ... except the fact that if you no longer want them they are a problem when you want to do other corals down the line (if that's your goal). Unfortunately very often you beginners that want the "fancy sps" tanks or what not, and think "oh well these grow great for instant gratification, I'll just remove them later when I get more experience under my belt" and that's where the issues lie.

And while true the number of injuries due to corals in this hobby is really small compared to how many tanks there are out there, I'd like to think that is because word of mouth (aka education) have prevented those injuries. Although every now and then you hear a story about a whole family having to be sent to the ER because someone put a rock with these palythoas on them in boiling water in an effort to kill them off.

My call on this coral though, is even if you want a weedy soft coral tank, don't keep this coral because it's just never going to get pretty. You're going to have a huge mat of brown to stare at, with some green if you manage to have a good amount of blue light on it too.
 
Most of this can be traced to our LFS. And we are having fun with the hobby. Learning something new everyday
Did this come on rock you got from your LFS? If so looks like they basically are recycling rock they got from other tanks... or they are very blase about their live rock vats having all these undesirable creatures in them.
 
I think these are lousy beginner corals.

1) Because beginners also usually have a single big pile of live rock in the middle.
As such, it is just asking for those invasive types to take over and make a mess of things.

2) They are a bit too easy.
Not a bad thing directly. But it lets you get really sloppy with water quality and lighting.
So when you add new coral, it is frustrating and confusing.
This coral grows fine .... why doesn't this one??
And correcting poor quality later, instead of up front, can be much more difficult.
 
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Those are great points and I agree with everything said. Except maybe the Spartan easy-is-bad-because-it-makes-you-weak bit lol. I was just trying to point out that, although for sure lower on the desirability spectrum, these are "real" corals, not just pests/hitchhikers, like some people think of them or at least talk about them. Your LFS giving you rock with aptasia or fish with ich is different than a rock with a paly polyp. At least that's my opinion.

The point about them being hard to get rid of or trim back later is completely true, as it is for many encrusting corals. I'm doing a new build and I was planning to move over most of my coral except the button polyps and green mushrooms. Leaving them out means leaving out much of my live rock as well. Also difficult for another reason, my wife doesn't agree we should leave behind the polyps and mushrooms, she likes them :)


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I think my LFS is growing/nurturing Aiptasia. Look at this beauty we saw today, it is about 2 inches tall. Sitting right in the middle of the sand.
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Oh my goodness. Which store is that?

I've come to expect aptasia and bubble agae from lfs's. Those are the two I seem to always be able to spot. It's no wonder with the volume of product that goes through them.
 
Oh my goodness. Which store is that?

I've come to expect aptasia and bubble agae from lfs's. Those are the two I seem to always be able to spot. It's no wonder with the volume of product that goes through them.
Yeah...I pretty much see aptasia at all the LFS
 
your choice wether to get rid of it or not really, i have a few green palys in my tank that I like, and they dont grow too fast
 
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