So I noticed this little thing when the lights came on today. I had noticed it previously but it never had tentacles when I had seen it and thought it was just some orange Coraline; which I had in the tank I had previously set up. It is vibrant and I mean vibrant orange when the blue lights are on. I don't think it could be an aptasia but I am no expert. I have had this and every other coral in this tank for several months. I have moved them from my old aquarium to a 10-gallon holding tank where I experienced some coral mortality and polyp bailout due to my very aggressive clown pair assaulting a hammer coral and my Duncan as well as less than ideal water parameters in the end (I got busy with the last month of college and the tank was out of sight out of mind...yay ADHD) my candy cane also bailed out two or so of its polyps before I got everything set up in the new much better system.
Anyway my terrible husbandry aside I've never seen aptasia on any of these corals previously and they were in a 10-gallon aquarium with no sand or rock work just media in a fully blacked-out and covered HOB for filtration. So while I did not maintain the water chemistry well I would have noticed any aptasia issues. Not to mention in their original aquarium before the teardown there was never an aptasia issue and I had no aptasia prevention critters either. I aggressively treated any coral with aptasia. I rip a good amount of a clove polyp colony apart removing aptasia and went as far as removing entire sections of a somewhat small gorgonian to remove the aptasia that had taken root in one of the branch clefts. None of these corals were in my system until I confirmed no further aptasia on them. I kept them in a different 10-gallon quarantine system.
Here is some video I was able to capture with my phone this morning after the lights came on and I saw the tentacles.
it doesn't seem to want to actually play the video on here but if you click the pop-out button in the top right it opens and you can hit play to watch the video. To me, it doesn't look like an anemone so much as a polyp with feeder tentacles out but I just don't know, and hoping maybe someone can offer up some additional thoughts. For further information, it's super tiny like maybe 1-2 mm in diameter tops. When closed up it's just a tiny orange disk with a tiny white spot in its center.
Anyway my terrible husbandry aside I've never seen aptasia on any of these corals previously and they were in a 10-gallon aquarium with no sand or rock work just media in a fully blacked-out and covered HOB for filtration. So while I did not maintain the water chemistry well I would have noticed any aptasia issues. Not to mention in their original aquarium before the teardown there was never an aptasia issue and I had no aptasia prevention critters either. I aggressively treated any coral with aptasia. I rip a good amount of a clove polyp colony apart removing aptasia and went as far as removing entire sections of a somewhat small gorgonian to remove the aptasia that had taken root in one of the branch clefts. None of these corals were in my system until I confirmed no further aptasia on them. I kept them in a different 10-gallon quarantine system.
Here is some video I was able to capture with my phone this morning after the lights came on and I saw the tentacles.
it doesn't seem to want to actually play the video on here but if you click the pop-out button in the top right it opens and you can hit play to watch the video. To me, it doesn't look like an anemone so much as a polyp with feeder tentacles out but I just don't know, and hoping maybe someone can offer up some additional thoughts. For further information, it's super tiny like maybe 1-2 mm in diameter tops. When closed up it's just a tiny orange disk with a tiny white spot in its center.
Last edited:
