Pest or eggs?!? Weird stuff attached to my polyps

[Steph72]

I just noticed tonight that one of my corals is covered in this weird looking “growth”. I’ve been looking for something similar to it online but not having much luck. My first thought was some kind of pest...but I also have two clownfish who have paired up. Could these be eggs?! Or something bad that’s going to hurt my corals? I always dip my corals and haven’t noticed any of this on the others. I’ve had this colony for about 6 months and this is the first time I’ve seen anything unusual on it.

 

[Kryptonian]

Clownfish eggs do normally have white tips like your picture but more of a body. How long have your clowns been paired? Have they been paying close attention to these zoas for a while?
The quantity is what has me interested. They’re pretty much coating the bases.

 

[Steph72]

The clowns have been together for about six months and I’ve noticed a lot of dancing and spawning behavior for at least a month now. They’ve never laid eggs before. I haven’t noticed them paying special attention to the zoas, they do most of their dancing by the glass. It just struck me as one possible option since this stuff on the zoas just suddenly appeared. I agree that the number of them is suspicious though.

 

[Steph72]

This morning I took a scraping from the zoas and put it under the microscope....this is too weird!!! Although I still have doubts I’m leaning towards these being eggs. I saw a distinct cardiac flow in one of them, but I wasn’t able to get it on video...it’s hard to get good pictures through the microscope. Anyhoo, I wanted to share some of the cool shots of them. I hope they’re clowns because whatever they are, there’s a ton of them!