Pipe Organ Growth ID

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Jxw6963

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Hello,
Wanted to see if anyone knew what this orange growth was at the bottom of my pipe organ? It's been there for awhile and hasnt seemed to affect it so far, looks full and happy during the day.
Sponge? Other?

20251222_210837.jpg
 
Hello,
Wanted to see if anyone knew what this orange growth was at the bottom of my pipe organ? It's been there for awhile and hasnt seemed to affect it so far, looks full and happy during the day.
Sponge? Other?

20251222_210837.jpg
Looks like a sponge .
 
Agreed looks like tunicates. I would use gentle soft brush and get rid of them as they will end up killing your organ coral...i have 3 organ corals and had similar problems with sponges and tunicates over the years. It will start to recede and die off until its less and less. Sometimes i just break off a fresh piece and start a new frag and throw out the contaminate part so it wont spread and cause troubles. Im what you call and expert so dont try this based on my opinion lol
 
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+1 for colonial tunicates; with sponges growing on coral flesh, I tend to give then the benefit of the doubt and trust them to be harmless unless the coral is actively receding from it, but you don't usually want to see tunicates growing on coral flesh (some colonial tunicates are harmfully invasive and may smother the corals they're growing on).

If the tunicates start to grow over the polyps of the coral, that would be a bad sign, but since you mention it has been there for a while and the coral has been fine, that's really the only thing I would look for at this point. If there's concern about it being or becoming harmfully invasive but you want to keep it, I would isolate it on its own rock so it's (theoretically) easier to contain it.
 

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