ID needed on this orange hitchiker

[sfboarders]

Was looking at my rocks and I see an orange looking aptasia. I do have a sun coral colony on the other side of my tank and it does look similar. Parazoanthus is the closest looking thing I found when doing a search. Any ideas?

See attached blurry pictures.

 

[Matt_Wandell]

If you blow water at it with a turkey baster, does it have a hard skeleton?

Looks very much like a small Tubastrea or Balanophyllia polyp to me.

 

[Matt_Wandell]

Oh, just read your entire post. If you have Tubastrea in the tank, then it's almost certainly a baby Tubastrea. Great work! You may grab a flashlight and start scouring the nooks and crannies for other polyps. They also will settle on pipes, acrylic, overflow boxes, etc...keep up the feeding and they grow fast.

 

[sfboarders]

Oh, just read your entire post. If you have Tubastrea in the tank, then it's almost certainly a baby Tubastrea. Great work! You may grab a flashlight and start scouring the nooks and crannies for other polyps. They also will settle on pipes, acrylic, overflow boxes, etc...keep up the feeding and they grow fast.

Baby sun corals can spread anywhere? These guys are gonna be hard to feed because they're small. I feed my sun coral pe mysis every night and new heads are popping out of it like crazy.

 

[tuberider]

Happy fathers day!!!

 

[Matt_Wandell]

Oh, just read your entire post. If you have Tubastrea in the tank, then it's almost certainly a baby Tubastrea. Great work! You may grab a flashlight and start scouring the nooks and crannies for other polyps. They also will settle on pipes, acrylic, overflow boxes, etc...keep up the feeding and they grow fast.

Baby sun corals can spread anywhere? These guys are gonna be hard to feed because they're small. I feed my sun coral pe mysis every night and new heads are popping out of it like crazy.

Yup, they can spread anywhere. The adults brood larvae that are fairly large and settle quickly. I hit the babies up with live baby brine and Cyclops with an eye dropper. One thing I'm working on is placing reproducing colonies in a basket at night (placing a net around them would work too) to catch all the released larvae and settle them appropriately. A lot of them just get sucked up by the filtration system, or settle on the sand where they won't live long.

 

[JAR]

Happy fathers day!!!

 

[sfboarders]

Oh, just read your entire post. If you have Tubastrea in the tank, then it's almost certainly a baby Tubastrea. Great work! You may grab a flashlight and start scouring the nooks and crannies for other polyps. They also will settle on pipes, acrylic, overflow boxes, etc...keep up the feeding and they grow fast.

Baby sun corals can spread anywhere? These guys are gonna be hard to feed because they're small. I feed my sun coral pe mysis every night and new heads are popping out of it like crazy.

Yup, they can spread anywhere. The adults brood larvae that are fairly large and settle quickly. I hit the babies up with live baby brine and Cyclops with an eye dropper. One thing I'm working on is placing reproducing colonies in a basket at night (placing a net around them would work too) to catch all the released larvae and settle them appropriately. A lot of them just get sucked up by the filtration system, or settle on the sand where they won't live long.

Cool, I'll see if I can get a net around this rock. I have some bbs I can brew up to feed them at night. Happy Fathers Day to everyone!!!

 

[yardartist]

Matt do they send out larvae ongoing or at cyclic times?

 

[Matt_Wandell]

Matt do they send out larvae ongoing or at cyclic times?

No idea. I've asked just about everybody I could think of about this and can't really get a definite answer. I hope to find out soon!