Long Shot ID

[TarHeelReefer22]

This still very small coral was a hitchhiker in my RedSeaMax that I set up for a long while and just dismembered about two years ago. Anyways I had a pretty large piece of coral skeleton just laying in the sand bed and was juts mixed in with my crushed coral. Well one night while observing my tank with the moon lights on mostly looking for Nudis and crabs I saw this tiny bit of color coming from one of the corallites it was like a colorful piece of sand in between two septa in the skeleton. This was one of my first SPS failures so I know for a fact that this wasn't an original organism still inhabiting the skeleton so I decided to tilt the piece off the sand bed and see what it became to be. Now it has been a little of two years and it appears to me to be some sort of LPS. It is still small so IDing might be impossible but it is now about a third the size of a dime and when I found it in the pore it was the size of a grain of sand.

 

[Rob&Gab]

blasto.

 

[Rob&Gab]

this is how my baby blasto looked.

 

[TarHeelReefer22]

That is awesome I never even had a blasto in that tank! Guess goes to show you not all hitch hikers are bad. what type of lens are you using for that shot if you don't mind me asking?

 

[TarHeelReefer22]

Also, if you now do you think that it will be ok for me to allow it to do its thing where it is or should I remove it from the skeleton and put it on a plate?

 

[cvysochin]

Could be a blasto or a plate coral. I've had a few as hitch-hikers. I'd leave it on what its growing. If anything secure that to the rock just so you don't loose it.

 

[TarHeelReefer22]

It is already attached to a pretty good sized piece so I am not to concerned with loosing it. I have had it for sometime now and have kept up with it through three moves and now it is in a bb tank so to loose it would be a great accomplishment. I am mostly worried about the growing of the coral hence why I was trying to ID it. I did't want the skeleton it is attached to will impede its growth?

 

[NanaReefer]

Blasto Merriletti.
Here's mine at 1 head. 4yrs ago.

Here it is today. They spread!

 

[TarHeelReefer22]

what size diameter do you think they get to before starting to split it has taken this little guy over a year to get from the size of a grain of sand to say a third of a dime