Sponges, Egg Sacks?? Please help ID! Losing Palys

[ChonkyFireCoral]

Hello, I had a nice big Paly colony of around 100 polyps and recently it has started to dissipate and many of the polyps are gone. It is in the center top of my 150g. As they faded away i noticed in the center was some type of sponge. As it progressed I initially thought some type of nudibranch was eating the Palys, but now I am not sure. I havent been able to find anything eating them. Please see in the picture, I just found the center has a bunch of ball shaped objects that I thought may be egg sacs. However they seem too big, they are about the size of an eraser and all strung together. They are near to where the main sponge is. The red arrows point to where the balls are, about 10 on the left and top and 4 below that are next to the main sponge I found with the yellow arrow, and what look like another with a vent hole on the left in yellow. Do some sponges reproduce this way? Could it possibly be sponges, maybe pineapple, that are just taking the polyps over? If so I didnt know that sponges could hurt polyps? Any help would be great. This was an expensive colony and i would prefer to save it rather than get rid of it. Thank you!

 

[kv69]

i would suggest manual removal. paly are poisonous, take proper care..

 

[ChonkyFireCoral]

Thank you for the reply, do you have any idea what they are though?

 

[kv69]

Hey, I'm sorry for the late reply, I'm not sure what they are. I just follow a simple rule, when in doubt... kill it with fire!!!!! JK, I first try to remove manually remove anything that is irritating coral.