Palythoas polyp disemboweled

[Tired]

Today I noticed that my red people eater paly was all scrunched up. When I looked closer, I saw a squiggly shape on it, the same color as its side. I thought it might be a nudibranch that I somehow didn't see, so I tried to pipette it off. Turns out it was not a nudibranch, it's the paly's intestine. Or, I assume. A long, thin, tube-shaped thing, anchored inside the paly at one end. There's a visible slit in the side of the paly, and it has a couple of tiny clear bubbles on it. It kind of looks like it just... burst, somehow. 

 

Has anyone ever had this happen? Any idea what's going on? The only thing I can think is maybe one of my hermits got too curious and poked a hole in its side by mistake. Kinda bummed, I only have the one polyp of this stuff. Guess I'll have to hope my LFS gets more in, or that I missed some loose polyps of this last time. It's a polyp off a colony that wound up anchored into the substrate in their sale tank. 

 

I'm assuming it's doomed, but I'm going to leave it in, just in case. I think the mouth end of the guts is still attached. It's got 2 inches of what I assume is intestine hanging out its side, though, so I don't think it's got any hope. Is there anything inside a paly other than the digestive and reproductive organs? 

 

Update from the following day: it's very much not dead. It's still kinda scrunched, but it's sitting there looking less bad than yesterday, so I think it might actually have a chance.

[Ratvan]

I had it happen with my Utter Chaos Palythoa, thing is it could only be a hitch hiker in my tank as the inhabitants are a Cerith Snail and Clownfish

 

It took a while (week) but it has now healed completely. I assumed something like a Nudibranch or Large Pod but have found no evidence and nothing else seems to have been affected

[Tired]

It looks kind of like that, except the guts are out of a hole in the side, not out of the mouth.

 

Or, it looked like that. I just went over and looked, and I can't see the guts any more, so I think something pulled them off like I was expecting. But, the paly actually looks better. It's still kind of scrunched, but less so. It just looks like something annoyed it a bit. It's definitely a lot less dead than disemboweled animals generally are. I can hardly believe it, but this thing's friggin' Wolverine. Durable little creature. I guess being able to photosynthesize makes disembowelment a lot more survivable.

[Tired]

Welp, it pretty much looks back to normal. 

 

When I was thinking about this thing's chances earlier, it had definitely slipped my mind slightly that this is an animal which I could theoretically never feed again without it dying. It wouldn't grow fast, but it wouldn't die. Perks of being a photosynthetic animal that can absorb amino acids directly from the water, I suppose. 

[Rastareefer]

Palys/zoas are pretty much indestructible. When I got my first zoa frag, I was cutting off the peg on the bottom of the frag plug and dropped it on a concrete floor, polyp-side down, it mashed one of the polyps to the point I had to put gloves on because of concerns over palytoxin.

 

Put it in the tank fully expecting one polyp to live (the one that wasn’t nearly ripped in half) and the other one to die because it had a significant tear directly through the mouth of the polyp. A week later it’d completely healed and is now just another zoa again.

 

They're crazy resilient, probably a byproduct of being readily eaten by so much of what lives on a reef I guess.