Nuisance species ID?

[TampaSnooker]

I think I am dealing with some kind of hydroid here. It grows in a very thin mat like a miniature star polyp and quickly overtakes everything in its path. The polyps retract quickly with a blast of water from a baster. Does anyone have a clue what it is and how to combat it? It seems to only grow across the stuff on the bottom of my tank (bare bottom) which suggests that it won't tolerate higher light.

[TampaSnooker]

Here it is overtaking some vice zoas

[Psirex]

can you get a closer pic here is something to compare what you see against a list of known pest

http://www.lionfishlair.com/hitchhiker/hitchhiker.shtml

[TampaSnooker]

These are better. You can see the colony covering the glass and the disc with the blue zoas on them. I've been through the link - had the brown hydroids forever. They seem to come and go with periods of poor maintenance...

[CDW]

194866

I think I have the same problem, struggling now for months with it, I have no idea what it is.

[bushnell]

Those look like clove polyps to me. I've tried everything and no luck. Only thing that really seems to work for me is to scrape them off as much as I can with a knife every couple of weeks.

[TampaSnooker]

They are not like any clove I've ever seen. Cloves have runners (stolons?) between each polyp. They grow in a mat, similar to star polyps but much more fragile. They are actually taking over my orange tipped cloves... Polyp size is about 1/8". The polyps retract when disturbed and you wouldn't know anything was there because it looks like a grey film when retracted.

[seapug]

Looks like a Sansibia soft coral. Google it. It can take over but is generally submissive and easy to remove with a brush.

[TampaSnooker]

http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1781309

How about that - Google brought me right back here...

Looks like it could very well be Sansibia or Sarcothelia. It definitely does not come off easily with a brush! I've scraped the glass clean on the bottom only to find it reinfested. Xeniid. That says a lot... Now - how do you kill it without affecting other corals? Super clean water?

[TampaSnooker]

I wonder if a peroxide dip would work on it? I just read a few of the peroxide dip threads and it seems that xenia is one of the few corals that are sensitive to it. It won't hurt the zoas, so it's worth a shot.

[TampaSnooker]

I never did get a positive ID on this species, but the closest relative I've seen is some of the Sansibia or Sarcothelia species. Last night, I decided to take action because it had overrun approx 35 frags and colonized rocks on the bottom of my tank and everything in between. (bare bottom)

Since it is a xeniid coral and I know that xenia had been reported to be one of the more sensitive species to hydrogen peroxide, I made a 10% solution of H2O2 in tank water for a dip. I left all the corals in for 10-20 min. Less for the Acans and cloves, longer for shrooms, zoas and heavily affected rocks. Today, I am not seeing ANY of the little buggers on the dipped rocks and frag discs. There is some on the coralline algae growing on the bottom. I may have to scrape that totally off to rid the tank of the polyps. The bare glass was easy enough to scrape them off, but the ones growing on coralline algae seem to be there in patches.

[TampaSnooker]

Update - the peroxide dip knocked them back for a week or so then them popped right back up out of nowhere. FW dip was very effective on the zoa colonies - the web just peeled right off. Which leads me to a correction in their growth form it is like a spider web, not a mat.

The only treatment I"ve found is Fluke Tabs but I have a couple large Nephthea colonies and tricolor cloves that I have no intention of killing in dealing with these buggers. It seems that others report that it takes very little of the drug to wipe out the softies - even residue on rocks treated outside the tank..

[brandon429]

amazing biology, never seen this invader before.