Need help with a possible coral growing on new live rock.

[ihus]

Hi, this is my second post here, i still cant tell what is a coral and what is not...

 

 

I went to a LFS last week, and they had a tank that used to have a lot of corals,

last week there was nothing left in the tank, only the live rock,

i think someone bought everything inside,

anyway, this week i went back to that same LFS

and i saw that the tank was empty (no water, nothing)

so i figured out they put the live rock that was in the tank

into another tank that they put live rock only,

the tank with live rock only had the live rock from the tank that had a lot of corals

last week, so i spent a few time looking at the live rock only tank and

saw what seems to be a small coral,

so i bought the rock, cause it looks like a small coral,

it has about 1 cm.

 

i would like to know if someone here can ID that for me,

im new, so i dont really know what is a coral and what is not,

the only corals i have are zoans, mushrooms, and other 2 soft corals

that i cant really remember the name.

 

sorry, i think i just talk too much lol

 

here is the picture i took.

 

Thank you.

 

[ihus]

Oh, the tank that rock was had corals that look like trees, and a few shrooms, i know its not a shroom XD

It retracted when it was out of the water, so i think its a soft coral.

[CJJon]

Hard to tell, maybe some tubastrea sp.?

 

http://www.advancedaquarist.com/2011/12/corals

[ihus]

It really looks like that tubastrea sp, but i think it is a soft coral,

it has a small white "stalk" with the "heads" on top of that,

i didnt poke it yet, its too small and im afraid i will knock it out,

i think the only way to know is to wait for it to grow a little more

and see what shape it takes,

Thanks for the reply,

hope its not a hard coral

cause i just started a few months ago,

and i have no idea how to dose calcium,

and i use low output LEDs (8000k).

 

Thanks.

[CJJon]

It's not a hard coral.

 

Hitchhikers will come and go. I would not worry about it or change your husbandry to try and support it at this point.

 

Don't be surprised if it disappears one day or grows like a weed and overgrows the tank.

[amphipod]

If it were to be something like tubastrea , your low lighting promotes growth better since they normally live in darker areas.

You can probably give it a good head start if you target feed him something like brine shrimp.