So someone gave me this rock, I took it without checking it out too much and now I'm thinking this thing has a lot of problems.

First, what is this thing covered in, slime algae, bubble algae, both?

Next, is that aiptasia in the big circle? In the smaller circles, there are small holes with a pair of small tentacles or something coming out that retract when disturbed, What are they?

So for the algae, I was going to pull the rock out and scrub it in my old water change water, does that make sense? If that is aiptasia, how do I nuke it? What about the other smaller critters?

Thanks for any help!
-Will

cyano bacteria, aiptasia, and some hitchhiker worm? prob a detrivore and of no concern. too "nuke" the aiptasia you can either inject it with very very hot freshwater or make a kalk paste (or you can just buy pickling lime from the grocery store...much cheaper and essentially the same thing) just mix the powder in with a lil bit of water and inject in the mouth...all these will require a syringe btw. as far as scrubbing the rock off I would try blasting it with a turkey baster before you scrub away. If you are going to scrub make sure you don't get too nuts and mow down your zoas.

OK great! Doing it now, the baster worked perfect and easier than I would have thought. I'll skip the scrubbing for now and just need to see if I can actually find the aiptasia now.

Thanks for the quick response!

+1 to Thunderstruck34

Those little things with the pair of "tentacles" are probably spionid worms. Harmless.

::edit:: That little green branch may be caulerpa too.

yeh or byropsis, first time i saw byropsis in my tank i thought i had somehow gotten a little bit of fern caleurpa in the tank

id frag them off the rock and throw that thing in the garbage. Not a shot in hell would i be putting that in my tank

Lots of trouble for a free rock!

I cleaned it up as well as I could. Plucked off the algae while I had it out of the tank. Not sure if this is a bad idea, but I put a drop of super glue down on top of the spot both it and the aiptasia were attached. If I see any sign of the algae or the aiptasia again, I'll probably frag the Zoas and move them.

Thanks again.

lol I tried putting super glue on aiptasia before thinking there is no way that this could live...I was wrong... within about 3 days it was back in all its glory. Same thing with trying to bury it, I buried it under a pile of sand and LR and within a few days it dug its way out.

+1 that rock is disgusting, it doesn't matter how much you clean it, that junk will spread.