Baby BTA? Neon orange worm tunicate thing?

[afishbestservedcold]

What is this thing?....I have a wild belief that my periclimenes anemone shrimp snips pieces of my orange BTA and wears them around like a hat, seen it a dozen times now, but I also sometimes see this orange item "roaming" around the sandbend (there might be 2 of them). I took this one out of the tank today, its a few mm long, it responds to touch and is pretty bright orange even out of the blue light. its also fairly dense, it fell at about the same rate as my sand and sank pretty straight when I put it back in the tank.

any ideas?

This one is after i put it back in the tank, i think it sort of latched itself onto this rock with the tip/tube pointing up:

 

[king aiptasia]

does it move around on its own?

 

[afishbestservedcold]

does it move around on its own?

I think it does but not very quickly and not much, it definitely can bend itself and make itself thicker/thinner. in that last photo, when i put it back in it was sort of balled up and then unwrapped and looked like it was 'clinging' to the rock.

 

[James M]

Looks exactly like a tentacle from a bta

 

[king aiptasia]

the flourescence was unusual but might it be a sipuncula?

 

[king aiptasia]

It’s a tentacle from the bta

can tentacles continue moving detached from the anemone?

 

[JGT]

Yes. I had a nem get flambayed in a power head and I had tentacles moving around for days.

 

[afishbestservedcold]

BTA tentacle it is, there are at least two of them that have been appearing now and then for 3+ weeks. has anyone ever seen an anemone shrimp snipping their anemone? I swear he wears them like doofy little hats....

 

[afishbestservedcold]

the flourescence was unusual but might it be a sipuncula?

I could see it, its real orange though even out of the blue light

 

[king aiptasia]

Yes. I had a nem get flambayed in a power head and I had tentacles moving around for days.

very interesting, i wonder how long one can stay inflated away from the body, might some species be able to regenerate from it?

 

[JGT]

Was wondering about that myself. If it’s like a starfish, not sure.

 

[king aiptasia]

Was wondering about that myself. If it’s like a starfish, not sure.

I'd lean towards a no, but unlike the echinoderm this animal is a radial oriented cnidarian with a more distributed body layout, someone needs to test it

 

[afishbestservedcold]

Well whatever it is its still on the rock where it landed last night, seems to have nestled itself into a nook and formed more of a ball shape. and it doesnt show any signs that its unhappy or deteriorating. @JGT how many days were your flambayed tentacles kickin around? This thing must be going on a month plus if not 2 months by now

 

[JGT]

Couple of days, but I suctioned them all out thinking I didn’t want them to be decaying in the tank. So who knows. You might sprout some new baby RBTA’s!