New oddball fouling organism in sump

[sculpin01]

My new tank was started with Florida live rock and I’ve recently been seeing these odd little guys growing on my sump walls. Tubular white body with what looks like a mucus net on the other end. Not a typical sponge (ignore the adjacent pineapple sponges). Any ideas?

 

[sculpin01]

Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?

 

[EeyoreIsMySpiritAnimal]

Do they move?

 

[EeyoreIsMySpiritAnimal]

@ISpeakForTheSeas , any ideas?

 

[shakacuz]

following. have never seen something like this…

 

[sculpin01]

They are extended into the water column and move with the current. I actually have it reversed. The clear part is the anchor, with the white tubular part extended into the water.

 

[ISpeakForTheSeas]

@ISpeakForTheSeas , any ideas?

Not many this time, unfortunately. I know a number of things that look similar to this (including, oddly enough, photos of cockroach "milk"), but none of the fouling organisms that I know of which look close to this develop in this manner, nor do they have that mucus-like anchor. The only thing I can think of that actually looks like this is a young hydra or jellyfish polyp (very unlikely, given the size of the organism in question) or some kind of foraminiferan. I'd guess the latter, but I'm not certain.

 

[sculpin01]

Thanks for the gander. I'd post it to the IDPlease Fb group but they have a "natural habitat only" rule.

 

[sculpin01]

Here's another pic of another with a much longer web-like base:

 

[Garpgarp]

Bump. Looks interesting.

 

[sculpin01]

I asked one of the world marine invertebrate experts on Twitter, who subsequently retweeted to the invertebrate community, and still no one knew what these were. The only suggestion was Placozoans, but those are single celled amoeba-like creatures, not stalked multicellular weirdos.

Anyone know a way to query Ron Shimek or equivalent these days?