Mushroom guts.

[Pitcom]

I was moving some corals around in my nano tank and i had to lay my torch on a rock of shrooms for a second. This mushroom got stung and it started to what seemed to be throw up. Some rippley material came out of its mouth for several minutes and took about 45 minutes to recede.

http://reefcentral.com/gallery/data/500/159141mushroomguts1.JPG

[Bebo77]

lol.. you were looking at a mushroom for 45 min.. lol


jk

["Umm, fish?"]

Mesenterial filaments. Nice photo!

Another really lovely photo:

http://www.marine-genomics-europe.org/gallery/displayimage.php?album=32&pos=28

[Pitcom]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=10919947#post10919947 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by "Umm, fish?"
Mesenterial filaments. Nice photo!

Another really lovely photo:

http://www.marine-genomics-europe.org/gallery/displayimage.php?album=32&pos=28

Thanks, great link. I suspected it was a defense mechanism.

["Umm, fish?"]

In case you're interested, I made some movies of them under the microscope once. Pretty creepy, if you ask me, how they keep moving even without the coral attached.

At 200x:

http://65.102.221.68/mov1_200x.mov

At 60x:

http://65.102.221.68/mov2_60x.mov

Eight hours later, at 60x:

http://65.102.221.68/mov3_60x.mov

[Pitcom]

That is definately pretty neat. Do all mushrooms have these?

["Umm, fish?"]

Actually, the ones in my movies came out of an Acanthastrea that had expended them about 4 inches ( :eek: ) to attack another coral. In the process, they had gotten wrapped around a rock and the coral couldn't retract them. I broke a piece off to look at but also to try to help the Acan.