Please help with ID of possible pest

[Saltysparky]

Hello to all, and thanks in advance. My tank has been running for about 4 months now, I noticed something I hadn't seen before during my morning visual. I'm sure someone will be able to help ID this critter, and whether or not I should be worried. There are a lot of knowledgeable reefers on reer2reef as I am constantly learning from other threads. Thanks to R2R for the swag at RAP Orlando last week!

 

[Saltysparky]

I probably should have mentioned that everything gets dipped using Seachem reef dip for about 10 minutes. No QT setup currently.

 

[lopez052308]

Kind of hard to see does it look like this???

 

[Saltysparky]

No, It's not a starfish. Sorry for the bad pics. It was first thing this morning under all blues. I tried using the amber film I have to make it better, but the colors are pretty bad. Thanks for the help. I'm thinking aptaisia, but the tentacles are different than others I've seen. I tried to grab it off of the rock and it retracted only to come back shortly after.

 

[EeyoreIsMySpiritAnimal]

No, It's not a starfish. Sorry for the bad pics. It was first thing this morning under all blues. I tried using the amber film I have to make it better, but the colors are pretty bad. Thanks for the help. I'm thinking aptaisia, but the tentacles are different than others I've seen. I tried to grab it off of the rock and it retracted only to come back shortly after.

Please post more pics with whiter lights. From the ones you posted, it doesn't look like aiptasia to me...

 

[Mikedawg]

Is it the same animal on the coral plug and the face of the rock?

 

[Saltysparky]

Yes

 

[Saltysparky]

I will post better pictures later today as I had to step away. Thanks to everyone, I appreciate the help.

 

[Mikedawg]

Might want to research hydroids

 

[lopez052308]

Might want to research hydroids

I’ve had a couple of hydroids that looked like that before.

 

[Saltysparky]

Okay, here is a different pic. Any clues? Looking into hydroids also.

 

[Saltysparky]

 

[Poseidon03]

It is hard to tell, but look up hydroid, ball anemone and aiptasia

 

[EeyoreIsMySpiritAnimal]

Looks more like an anemone now... Maybe aiptasia, maybe something else. Any ocean live rock in the tank?

 

[Mikedawg]

Yeah, these pics look like a ball anemone

 

[EeyoreIsMySpiritAnimal]

Doesn't look like a ball nem (which is actually a corallimorph) to me...

 

[Tired]

Odd aiptasia-type, I'd say. Probably best to remove. Coral dip won't kill those- any dip that would harm them would kill the coral itself.

 

[lopez052308]

I have a feather duster that kind of looks like that. Probably some sort of nem like other have said though.

 

[Saltysparky]

Looks more like an anemone now... Maybe aiptasia, maybe something else. Any ocean live rock in the tank?

I'm not sure about the rock, however I don't think any hitchhikers survived the cycling phase. I bought a used system that was mature, with mature rock (origin unknown). I tried keeping all of the rock wet during the move, but after a couple of weeks all of the bristle worms that came with the rock were dying off. Which I didn't mind, but I figured if they couldn't survive not much else did either. For the first couple of weeks I also had high salinity due to a cheap Amazon digital salinity pen, I only use a refractometer now which I check weekly for accuracy. Dealing with those two things changed my rock from coralline covered to white...like new rock. Seeing that made me feel that I inadvertently killed all the beneficial life.

 

[Saltysparky]

Odd aiptasia-type, I'd say. Probably best to remove. Coral dip won't kill those- any dip that would harm them would kill the coral itself.

I will work on removal, tried one earlier and he seemed to disappear into a tiny hole or retracted a lot.