Pic Heavy New Live Rock I.D.

[131696]

That what I like, thinking of just a tank with ocean rock like that and fish that's all ,why cover up that rock with corals? Show the rock..lol

 

[TnFishwater98]

That what I like, thinking of just a tank with ocean rock like that and fish that's all ,why cover up that rock with corals? Show the rock..lol

There are corals on the LR also...Stuff that you won’t find in a online shop or LFS...

 

[NashobaTek]

The nems might be curly ques.
Great looking rock and I need to get some ordered!

 

[131696]

Yea its Awesome

 

[TnFishwater98]

$60 for 10lbs or a $90 nano special 17 lbs smaller rock

 

[KellyCorals]

Happy Saturday (to most). I purchased 20lbs of deco live rock from gulfliverock.com which arrived on Thursday, thanks Dan! I'm loving it so far and I am excited by every new thing I see. If you have seen my other posts you'll notice I'm kind of a name junkie, so as you can imagine getting rock like this is a bit of a nightmare (an exciting nightmare). On to the things.

First, a list of what I already figured out to the best of my ability:
Red Lettuce - Halymenia floridana
Red Grape - Botryocladia sp.
Bryopsis pennata
Caulerpa paspaloides
Halimeda opuntia

Various coralline algae
Various sponges and tunicates

Turkey Wing Clams - Arca zebra
Ring-Tentacle Anemones - sp.
Bristleworms (most of which were dead)
Maybe an isopod that I haven't caught a picture of yet, it flips and flops around like nobody taught how to swim proper.

Unboxing pics:


















Here it is after two days, I plucked off as much of the bryopsis as I could.


All three large clams are still alive, two tiny anemones and probably a feather duster have popped out.


I very much would like to know what these are. They are pretty solid, don't sway at all despite looking feathery, haven't changed as far as how open/closed they are, not sure if it's because they're dead or it's just their nature. There's a few more small specimens scattered about the rocks but these are a good 1" long.


Here I've circled what I'd like to know details on if anyone can tell. Could get better pics if needed.


Thanks for looking! If you spot anything you recognize please do share

Here have some more pictures:

That’s some nice live rock! I was thinking of buying my rock from KPAquatics but maybe I should check out your guy?

 

[vetteguy53081]

This is a species of caulerpa. I can't remember the species but it looks really nice as it spreads out.

Looks alot like Neomeris annulata

 

[vetteguy53081]

Update! I’ve moved things around and found a few new critters. The 3 large turkey wing clams are still alive. All the macros are doing well although there is definitely bryopsis, got some emerald crabs that will hopefully work on that, moved a portion of each macro that I actually want to other tanks so they don’t devour all of it. I figured out that the small green macro in the last post is caulerpa verticillata.

Botryocladia occidentalis. I’m still not 100% sure on the other two red macros.


I’ve concluded that the anemones are absolutely in the aiptasia family, however, not the common pest aiptasia, if it’s the species I think it might be then they don’t reproduce asexually, more will be revealed. Moved the rock that the larger specimen is on to a 5g AIO that I set up.


On that same rock, after moving it, I found 5 small clams, probably jewel box clams. One is fairly large, around 3-4cm. The open siphons can be seen near the center of this photo.


Here I think is a red sea squirt, it’s hard to decifer any siphons but it reacts to being touched.


There’s a bunch of these clear tunicates, and in fact I believe I saw a breeding event of some sort, one night for a couple hours there were hundreds of what looked like tiny white tadpoles swimming around the 5g. I have a video of it that I may try to upload somehow. There are also orange tunicates that I haven’t gotten a photo of.


And then just last night I found another coral coming back, not yet sure what it is. Approx 1cm diameter


And of course a nice assortment of feather dusters, this is the largest one.

Now that I’m staring at it I’m wondering if it’s a tube anemone. I don’t know enough about feather dusters, but I don’t think they have mouths like that? Idk.

I think that’s about it.

A couple of rock anemones and Halocynthia tunicate

 

[vetteguy53081]

Update! I’ve moved things around and found a few new critters. The 3 large turkey wing clams are still alive. All the macros are doing well although there is definitely bryopsis, got some emerald crabs that will hopefully work on that, moved a portion of each macro that I actually want to other tanks so they don’t devour all of it. I figured out that the small green macro in the last post is caulerpa verticillata.

Botryocladia occidentalis. I’m still not 100% sure on the other two red macros.


I’ve concluded that the anemones are absolutely in the aiptasia family, however, not the common pest aiptasia, if it’s the species I think it might be then they don’t reproduce asexually, more will be revealed. Moved the rock that the larger specimen is on to a 5g AIO that I set up.


On that same rock, after moving it, I found 5 small clams, probably jewel box clams. One is fairly large, around 3-4cm. The open siphons can be seen near the center of this photo.


Here I think is a red sea squirt, it’s hard to decifer any siphons but it reacts to being touched.


There’s a bunch of these clear tunicates, and in fact I believe I saw a breeding event of some sort, one night for a couple hours there were hundreds of what looked like tiny white tadpoles swimming around the 5g. I have a video of it that I may try to upload somehow. There are also orange tunicates that I haven’t gotten a photo of.


And then just last night I found another coral coming back, not yet sure what it is. Approx 1cm diameter


And of course a nice assortment of feather dusters, this is the largest one.

Now that I’m staring at it I’m wondering if it’s a tube anemone. I don’t know enough about feather dusters, but I don’t think they have mouths like that? Idk.

I think that’s about it.

anemones may be curliques

 

[vetteguy53081]

Update! I’ve moved things around and found a few new critters. The 3 large turkey wing clams are still alive. All the macros are doing well although there is definitely bryopsis, got some emerald crabs that will hopefully work on that, moved a portion of each macro that I actually want to other tanks so they don’t devour all of it. I figured out that the small green macro in the last post is caulerpa verticillata.

Botryocladia occidentalis. I’m still not 100% sure on the other two red macros.


I’ve concluded that the anemones are absolutely in the aiptasia family, however, not the common pest aiptasia, if it’s the species I think it might be then they don’t reproduce asexually, more will be revealed. Moved the rock that the larger specimen is on to a 5g AIO that I set up.


On that same rock, after moving it, I found 5 small clams, probably jewel box clams. One is fairly large, around 3-4cm. The open siphons can be seen near the center of this photo.


Here I think is a red sea squirt, it’s hard to decifer any siphons but it reacts to being touched.


There’s a bunch of these clear tunicates, and in fact I believe I saw a breeding event of some sort, one night for a couple hours there were hundreds of what looked like tiny white tadpoles swimming around the 5g. I have a video of it that I may try to upload somehow. There are also orange tunicates that I haven’t gotten a photo of.


And then just last night I found another coral coming back, not yet sure what it is. Approx 1cm diameter


And of course a nice assortment of feather dusters, this is the largest one.

Now that I’m staring at it I’m wondering if it’s a tube anemone. I don’t know enough about feather dusters, but I don’t think they have mouths like that? Idk.

I think that’s about it.

Red stuff looks like maybe Botryocladia sp

 

[JoannaCora]

Wow this thread is popping off today! Hi everyone!

I can say with about 98% certainty that the "banded anemone" that I found first,

is in the aiptasia genus, but although not the most common species seen in the hobby it did spit out two or three babies in another tank that quickly moved and hid on the back side of the rock. I put two peppermint shrimp in the 5 gallon tank that happened in and they gobbled all those problematic anemones up in about 2 weeks. So far I haven't seen any true curliques on this rock.

I still highly recommend this rock due to all the biodiversity (price aint bad to boot), in my 20lb order there were at least 8 types of macroalgae, 5 types of sponges, 4 species of anemones, 3 types of coralline algae, 3 types of tunicates, 2 species of clams (at least 7 individuals that are still alive), a coral or two that are still working on coming back to life and I have yet to identify, bristleworms, and a welk snail I have yet to catch. Even shipped dry!

 

[TnFishwater98]

Wow this thread is popping off today! Hi everyone!

I can say with about 98% certainty that the "banded anemone" that I found first,

is in the aiptasia genus, but although not the most common species seen in the hobby it did spit out two or three babies in another tank that quickly moved and hid on the back side of the rock. I put two peppermint shrimp in the 5 gallon tank that happened in and they gobbled all those problematic anemones up in about 2 weeks. So far I haven't seen any true curliques on this rock.

I still highly recommend this rock due to all the biodiversity (price aint bad to boot), in my 20lb order there were at least 8 types of macroalgae, 5 types of sponges, 4 species of anemones, 3 types of coralline algae, 3 types of tunicates, 2 species of clams (at least 7 individuals that are still alive), a coral or two that are still working on coming back to life and I have yet to identify, bristleworms, and a welk snail I have yet to catch. Even shipped dry!

Looks great! Just make sure you wash your rock in buckets to get all that silt off. Make sure you examine what comes off the rock at the bottom of the buckets. You might be surprised what you find. I also got acrylic risers from
The container Store so I could observe what is on the bottom of the rocks and see what might fall to bottom of QT tank. Like I mentioned before I still have 2 rocks in 2 different tanks to observe. I took some pics today. I ordered these LR last September...
pic-1 ~Just noticed these as I turned the rock around, I’m assuming cup corals?
Pic-2~This is what Dan told is probably a ‘Lightbulb Anemone”. It definitely has bulb tips sometimes.
Pic-3-5~ These I believe are a type of Aiptasia anemone. They have spread in this little 3 gallon but my theory is that since they are in such a small area they might be reproducing faster. (Probably wrong)They aren’t as invasive as famous glass anemone. Have a couple in my DT that I’m not worried about. Only seen them on LR.
pic-6~ A couple of those Aiptasia anemones and white fan ? (Saw it on website the other day and believe it’s a anemone also)
Pic-7-9 - Turtle Grass Anemone
Pic-8~ My peppermint shrimp that will not touch these anemones
Pic-9~ Same Aiptasia anemone in DT, hasnt moved or heavily reproduced
Pic10~ A big anemone that might also be in the Aiptasia family but is not invasive (to my knowledge)
Pic-11~ This what I am a little worried about in my DT. Ball anemone. They have spread but mainly on base rock. I don’t think I got this from Gulf LR but when I purchased my base rock locally.
Pic-12~Curley Q that has 2-3 babies under it. Love it!
pic-13~ another Curley Q smiling for the camera
Pic-14~ Just had to add my last eat purchase for the QT, Bumblebee Shrimp

 

[Rtaylor]

Update! I’ve moved things around and found a few new critters. The 3 large turkey wing clams are still alive. All the macros are doing well although there is definitely bryopsis, got some emerald crabs that will hopefully work on that, moved a portion of each macro that I actually want to other tanks so they don’t devour all of it. I figured out that the small green macro in the last post is caulerpa verticillata.

Botryocladia occidentalis. I’m still not 100% sure on the other two red macros.


I’ve concluded that the anemones are absolutely in the aiptasia family, however, not the common pest aiptasia, if it’s the species I think it might be then they don’t reproduce asexually, more will be revealed. Moved the rock that the larger specimen is on to a 5g AIO that I set up.


On that same rock, after moving it, I found 5 small clams, probably jewel box clams. One is fairly large, around 3-4cm. The open siphons can be seen near the center of this photo.


Here I think is a red sea squirt, it’s hard to decifer any siphons but it reacts to being touched.


There’s a bunch of these clear tunicates, and in fact I believe I saw a breeding event of some sort, one night for a couple hours there were hundreds of what looked like tiny white tadpoles swimming around the 5g. I have a video of it that I may try to upload somehow. There are also orange tunicates that I haven’t gotten a photo of.


And then just last night I found another coral coming back, not yet sure what it is. Approx 1cm diameter


And of course a nice assortment of feather dusters, this is the largest one.

Now that I’m staring at it I’m wondering if it’s a tube anemone. I don’t know enough about feather dusters, but I don’t think they have mouths like that? Idk.

I think that’s about it.

Bottom pic is a type of aptasia

 

[Rtaylor]

You’ve got a few hidden cup corals, the ones that look like this:

 

[TnFishwater98]

I was told they might be Rhizotrochus

 

[monkeyCmonkeyDo]

Aptasia and curly ques. Rhizo have a skeleton under the flesh.
D

 

[TnFishwater98]

Bottom pic is a type of aptasia

Bottom pic? Which one...

 

[monkeyCmonkeyDo]

Last picture looks like a squat lobster
D

 

[TnFishwater98]

Several types of non-invasive aiptasia, but nothing to concerning

Last picture looks like a squat lobster
D

Bumblebee Shrimp

 

[monkeyCmonkeyDo]

Post 32? Squat lobster.