Egg identification?

kkircher · Jan 3, 2021

I woke up this morning and saw these eggs on the glass at the end of the tank. I originally thought it was snail eggs because of the concentration and seemed like in an line. Then I started looking over the entire pane of glass and saw them everywhere. So I started looking over the entire tank and these things are everywhere. Every pane of glass has them. This is an 8 foot tank. Can zoom in on picture and I can take more if helpful.

I thought way too dispersed for snails.

I don’t think they are fish eggs but here are the fish,

Yellow, powder blue, powder brown, sailfin tangs
Emperor, flame, coral beauty angels
Carpenter and 6 line wrasse
2 clowns
Cleaner shrimp

Standard cuc snails

5 hammer corals, 2 torches, 1 Goni, 2 random sps frags, few select zoas 2 rtba that was 1 until 2 weeks ago when it split.

I was thinking some kind of coral or the rtba trying to spawn? Something that must have spawned into water column for dispersal

Any ideas?

vetteguy53081 · Jan 3, 2021

Looks like eggs of a clown or damsel. Some female dwarf angels may do this also

kkircher · Jan 3, 2021

vetteguy53081 said:
Looks like eggs of a clown or damsel. Some female dwarf angels may do this also

Interesting I do have 2 clowns, can’t say I saw anything that showed them as pairing up. It is a big tank to show eggs all over the 8 ft. Do they spawn into the water column?

vetteguy53081 · Jan 3, 2021

kkircher said:
Interesting I do have 2 clowns, can’t say I saw anything that showed them as pairing up. It is a big tank to show eggs all over the 8 ft. Do they spawn into the water column?

They spawn in the strangest places (heater tubes, on a coral, on cord going to powerhead and more

ThePurple12 · Jan 3, 2021

Those don’t look like clown eggs, plus clowns spawn in one spot and constantly guard.
I‘m 99% sure tangs are egg scatterers, releasing them into the water column. They wouldn’t settle on the glass like that.
What snails do you have?

My best guess is a coral. Cool!

kkircher · Jan 3, 2021

Well I am 90% sure it is the rbta’s. I watched a bunch of YouTube videos and pictures on reef2reef and the eggs look just like what I saw. The odd thing, the rbta split like 2 weeks ago or so. Both anemones then traveled to the exact spot on the rock and hung out. In my research I saw that the male will perk up a bit, and the bigger of the two looks to have done that. Since it happened at night I didn’t notice cloudy water. I wanted to see what might be in my sump and that is where it looks like I can see what looks like some of the sperm in the chamber right before the filter socks.
So I am almost certain this is the case.

The fish have started to chow through the larger deposit areas of the eggs but there are so many all over the place that we will see if anything actually ever shows. I doubt it but it was a surprise none the less.

kkircher · Jan 11, 2021

Ok it has been a little while. The eggs in the display haven’t really changed at all. Good portion disappeared. I had previously noticed a strange mucus substance in the chamber before my filter socks and assumed that must have been where all the seamen had gone. Figuring nothing of it. Well now I have hundreds of these things growing in the sump. In almost every chamber. They are bigger then the eggs by a lot and have grown over last 3 days. You can zoom into them on them on glass. I have never seen any aptasia in the tank so I can’t imagine it could have grown in this number. My best guess, bubble tip anemone, hammer or torch. I have a few of both the corals. The anemone recently split into two, can it split into different sex? Any thoughts?