Mystery polyps on the underside of a Cap

[jservedio]

I've got some mysterious polyps growing on the underside of a rather large monti cap and I'm not sure what it is. At first I was thinking it was just the remaining polyps of a previous layer, but it is growing as a blob in a very non-cap shape and the rest of the underside has been very long dead and covered in spirorbid worms and a bunch of other stuff. It is in total darkness (I used a headlamp to get the picture), but it's definitely alive and fairly new. You can see there is some living cap flesh on some of the other layers that have been shaded for months slowly dying, but they look nothing like these and the polyps from the cap itself are about 30% smaller!

 

Here is an up-close and a context picture to get an idea where it is - any ideas?

 

 

 

[Murphs_Reef]

Yeah odd..I kinda wanted to say sponges to begin with..then I seen the yellow blobs / polyps..

I have a yellow encrusting that looses colour underneath but the polyps still grow, albeit with less colour? 

 

Those blobs really do look like Monti polyps thought

[jservedio]

10 minutes ago, Murphych said:

Yeah odd..I kinda wanted to say sponges to begin with..then I seen the yellow blobs / polyps..

I have a yellow encrusting that looses colour underneath but the polyps still grow, albeit with less colour? 

 

Those blobs really do look like Monti polyps thought

I originally just thought it was some flesh and polyps on the underside clinging to life, but the polyps are significantly bigger than the polyps on the cap (like 30% bigger), they look nothing like the flesh and polyps that are alive on the underside, and they cropped up so far underneath and not toward the edge and formed blobs. It's hard to tell, but the biggest blob is about 4" in from the rim - so waaayyy up under there.

 

The polyps do look extremely monti-like, but definitely not like a cap. I wonder if maybe a piece of a different monti with bigger polyps elsewhere in the tank somehow landed in that nook and held on? I do end up with shards of all kinds of coral all over the tank from fragging. I even occasionally find shards of monti cap in the sump.

[Murphs_Reef]

It's a cool idea that it's some form of Monti graft. Definitely an interesting find. It just looks like nothing like have really seen before in a second look.. kinda Monti polyp, bit spongy... But from what I can see they are almost fluid / Soft  in form.. 

[LazyFish]

Could it be a not happy porites?

[jservedio]

11 minutes ago, Murphych said:

It's a cool idea that it's some form of Monti graft. Definitely an interesting find. It just looks like nothing like have really seen before in a second look.. kinda Monti polyp, bit spongy... But from what I can see they are almost fluid / Soft  in form.. 

So I reached in and gave it a poke - it's got a skeleton, so not spongey. I've got a big purple montipora confusa that I frag every few weeks and it always makes a mess of broken shards everywhere. I wouldn't be surprised if a shard fell in there and somehow started growing. The polyps are definitely the right size. Could also be an acro too - if you look at the zoomed out picture you can see an acro growing up out of the center of the cap and they've been battling for 2-3 years now. I regularly frag them both, so could potentially be an acro too.

 

The cap underneath is entirely dead and has been for a long time, so not a graft or anything and is a clean area for something to grow on (like all the worms under there).

 

I definitely don't think it's just some cap that survived since the polyps are way too big.

 

Just now, LazyFish said:

Could it be a not happy porites?

Definitely not - I haven't added a coral to the tank in well over a year now, so if a bit hitchhiked in, I'd have noticed it by now.