Sponge and/or worm hiding in my zoas?

[bitstream]

Noticed last night when my zoas closed up these short white filaments nested among my zoas. Sponge perhaps? There’s also what looks like a white polyp but from the end comes this little feathery thing sticking out.

Took photos grub two angles and circled where needed.

What are these? Keep or remove with prejudice?

 

[ISpeakForTheSeas]

Sponge perhaps? There’s also what looks like a white polyp but from the end comes this little feathery thing sticking out.

Looks like a sponge to me - I can't see the white polyp-looking thing well enough to say what that might be, though.

For the sponge, see my post in the link below:

Growth id?

New to coral, noticed this a couple days ago. At first I just assumed it was the zoa spreading, but now I am not sure. Should I be concerned? It’s not really noticeable when they are open. The last pic is when I noticed it, the other two are this morning.

www.reef2reef.com

 

[Rjukan]

Very hard to tell in those pics. Ideally you can take clearer ones. But in that 2nd pic, the structure looks like a vermatid, but the color is off.

Edit: unless it's all that white mass in the 1st pic? That goes outside of your circled aread. That looks like a type of sponge

 

[bitstream]

I took the rock out of the tank and photographed it under natural light. Sponge like material growing between polyps but there’s that big white mass that’s considerably larger than the polyps. It has a large hole in the middle and last night there was a small feathery protrusion.

Anywho, I tweezed and cut it all out. If I didn’t authorize something to be in my tank and I’m not sure it’s 100% beneficial, it’s getting removed with prejudice.

 

[bitstream]

Looking at the sponge up close and comparing to various pictures, I suspect this is a pineapple sponge. Weird thing is that this coral frag was dipped and has been in the tank for nearly 5 months and I only noticed the sponge recently, so either it was tiny and hiding the whole time or it somehow hopped into my tank via another coral, yet this is the only one I see (so far).

Given my limited saltwater experience, corals seem like they're almost more trouble than their worth considering that hitchhikers are pretty much a given. Every coral I've added to my tank has had something on it which either made an appearance during the dip process, during quarantine, or after introduction to the tank.

The question seems to be not WHETHER you'll get hitchhikers from corals, but HOW MANY.