Aptasia?

NewReefer455 · Aug 14, 2020

Please bear with me because my ability to take a picture of these is absolutely terrible. They are beginning to spread around some of my rock. Some are clear and some are a bit reddish. They all are about a 1/4” tall stalk, with a small ball on the end with extended tentacles out of the ball. They move freely and don’t seem to retract tentacles when disturbed. I’m guessing aptasia, but they’ve been around a while and don’t seem to quickly grow.I actually had a frag come in and after dipping it still had a small single aptasia grow on it in about a week that was easily double this size and easily identifiable as aptasia from pictures online. Maybe it’s some other sort of small anemone?
The first two pictures are of the same single one in different positions and the third is a small colony from somewhat of a side view, again sorry about the crap picture quality.

laverda · Aug 14, 2020

Looks like a tunicate to me in the last photo. A harmless filter feeder.

smm52487 · Aug 14, 2020

Check out colonial hydroids. Some folks on here were able to help me Id them. Hard to tell for sure from your pics, but may help you narrow it down.

NewReefer455 · Sep 8, 2020

Alright its been a while but they are back. After being well convinced that these we not aptasia, I decided to just let them go and see what happened. I have been having a slight flare up of cyano, which I now have under control, but I was siphoning off the cyano into a sock in the sump with some airline every other day and then blowing the rocks out with a baster. In addition I was also lightly brushing the rocks with a tooth brush once a week. This seemed to make whatever these are disappear in the display, and they are now strictly inhabiting the sump. They grow no larger than around an 1/8" and don't seem to bother anything so far. I just noticed today that there are a number of them on a darker wall and they are also on the rocks in the refugium. I'm no longer too worried about them, but I would like to have an ID if possible.

Justin Cook · Sep 8, 2020

If I only has the 2nd set of pics, I would say it's some type of aptasia. However, the first set really loks like a hydroid of some sort. I've just never seen an aptasia with such thin tentacles but that doesn't mean they aren't out there. Either way, it looks like a pest for sure and I'd hit them with kalk paste or AptasiaX.

NewReefer455 · Sep 8, 2020

Justin Cook said:
If I only has the 2nd set of pics, I would say it's some type of aptasia. However, the first set really loks like a hydroid of some sort. I've just never seen an aptasia with such thin tentacles but that doesn't mean they aren't out there. Either way, it looks like a pest for sure and I'd hit them with kalk paste or AptasiaX.

Both sets of pictures are of the same organism, my ability to take a decent picture just improved lol. What is most odd is that my system is a 25 gal display and a 5 gal frag tank both connected to the same 20 gal sump. At first I figured it was some type of aptasia/glass anemone as well and that the peppermint shrimp in my display must have made quick work of them, but just today I noticed them thriving in the sump. If the peppermint had been truly controlling their population I would expect a huge amount of them in the attached frag tank as there are only a handful of snails in there. I'm honestly at a loss. but as long as they aren't harming anything I'll just let nature take its course.

elysics · Sep 8, 2020

I think hydroid too, but the solitary kind, not the colonial kind. Google "solitary hydroid" and see if yours match the images, particularly whether yours have that "second head" protuding from the middle of the tentacles. I think im seeing that structure in some of them in the last picture you posted.

NewReefer455 · Sep 8, 2020

elysics said:
I think hydroid too, but the solitary kind, not the colonial kind. Google "solitary hydroid" and see if yours match the images, particularly whether yours have that "second head" protuding from the middle of the tentacles. I think im seeing that structure in some of them in the last picture you posted.

Some of those definitely look similar in overall shape, but nothing is exactly similar. I might just chalk it up to 'some type of hydroid' and see what happens with them overall.

sixline · Sep 8, 2020

In your first post you said "they move freely and don’t seem to retract tentacles when disturbed."

Well, aptasia will retract their whole body tentacles and all when you poke at them, so it doesn't sound like aptasia if they don't retract.

And since your photo taking ability is almost as bad as mine, you might just be better off googling other people's photos of aipstia and determining if they look like what you have.