what is this?

[justforfun]

found this in my qt tank...its round and started to grow branches out...hard skeleton with what appears to be polyps

......looks like sps but worried its a pest...when you touch it it closes up

 

[nata]

Looks like a monti to me

 

[user 26995]

What does it feel like?
Does it feel like a hard coral? Have you tried scraping any off just to see if it is a skin like film or hard? If it is hard, it looks like monti to me too, but how did it get there?

 

[user 26995]

Well I dont know...the things protruding from it, are those hard too? Can you tell how tall they are. Monti's dont have things like that protruding up like what it looks like in the pic. Or are those the polyps?

 

[donrando]

curious, do you have any pocillopora in your tank? it may have spawned

 

[returnofsid]

My guess would be Montipora or Pocillopora, as has been mentioned above.

Pocillopora commonly performs "polyp bail out," with the polyps settling throughout the tank, starting entire new colonies.

 

[jrgilles]

Yea, I was gonna say pocillopora. If they get stressed, they can have a 'polyp bailout'. I have them all over my tank from a bailout event, and they looked a lot like that when I first noticed them.

rob

 

[justforfun]

i was told by someone they thought a bailout too**...its soft at first the it feels like hard skeleton when i touch it...at 1st they were all really small dots but i saw they are getting alot bigger.....to think i trew one 5lb rock out in the sun that had a 2 on it....t

the branches have got to be getting close to 5/16"

 

[user 26995]

Yeah, when you say soft at first, that definately sounds like pocillopora. I was surprised how soft they feel.