Hi,

Bought this piece of live rock from my LFS cos it had some very strange orange pertrusions on it and it was much better than the rock i have in my tank. Does anyone out there know what they are i think they are some kind of sponge. Also on the second photo but not clear are hundreds of small, what i can only describe as star polyps. They are single stem with heads like star polyps and they retract at night.

Many thanks
Lee.

Orange sponge like growths



Star like Polyps below the green algae

The orange looks like sponge. Can't see the ployps unfortunatley.

The green algae, I have some of it, it spreads wildly and hair algae attaches itself to it. It s a bit of a pain macro - algae, keep on top of it.

Billy

Hi Lee dont suppose you have a better pic of the second picture as you have what looks like to me Hydroids!

Are the polyps brown with, i think '5 leaves' so to speak, I had these and they nearly killed off a colony of yellow polyps the solution which worked for me seemed to be peppermint shrimps.

The way to tell if they are a form of GPS is they will have a purple(or coloured) basal mat all interconnected.

There is a fair amount of info on the net so have a look about and see if they are hydroids.



steve

Thanks for getting back guys. Ive had a look on the net reference Hydroids and they dont appear to resemble them. They are not interconnected at all and seem to be randomly scattered along the rock. I will try to get a better photo this week and post it soonest.

They are a purple/brown colour with about five fingers which retreat into a tube like body which is about 2-3 mm in length. Ive had these before in a previous tank and just assumed they were small colonies of polyps.

Im sure the answer is out there but im not worried at the moment. As for the algae, ill trim it back and keep on top of it.

Many thanks again.

LEE