New Animal Found

[anabolic_1]

Hi Gang,
I was checking out my tank tonight and found a new animal that I had not seen before, it has 8 or 9 hair thin, branched white tentacles, that have the ability to retract each arm individually, the arms are about 1inch long each, any one have any idea what it might be? Also, I have a 3 inch round protrusion from one of my live rocks, today it shot out a stream of gunk, its a clam, the one have of its shell it attached to the rock the the other half is covered with tiny tube worms, this reef stuff really amazes me.
TYIA
Mike.

[ReefSOE]

I had this peice of LR for a loooong time and always wondered about what used to live in this old calcified tube that ran about 1 inch up the underside of a rock.... well 2 years later this rock was moved into my new 75g tank which is brand new about 3 1/2 weeks now and the reddest feathers are coming out.. looks like a x-mas worm... but its not the feathers are very red though... i noticed it 2 days ago and its soooo tiny... any ideas??

[Nagel]

Mike:

From your description, it sounds as though you have a spaghetti worm. I've seen 'em in red, white or orange.


ReefSOE

Sounds like a common tubeworm to me. X-mas worms only come on porites, they need the porites coral to live (they are commensal with it). I doubt it is a coco worm, they are a bit bigger and aren't usually hitchhikers though.

HTH

[ReefSOE]

figured it was a regular tubie... just never new they could lay dormant for so long thats what impressed me

[katspaw]

Eric,
Just to let you know, I had christmas tree worms on a piece of acropora several years ago. It was Dr. Ron who ID it for me. I was under the impression that they only came on porites corals then but not so. They do occassionally show up on other host stoney corals

Tracey