What just grew out of my zoas??

[Marcellina]

Ok I have had this zoa frag since March 2010. Its always been on my frag rack. About 8 weeks ago I noticed a light colored 'polyp'. As it grew I thought oh wow some sort of weird ricordia mushroom.

Well today I was doing some maintenance in the tank and decided to move my duncan. The cleaner shrimp decides to pounce on my unsuspecting hand! I jump and my hand brushes against the 'mushroom' and its hard as a rock!

What could it be?

I have been staring at it and it looks like it could be a fungia plate?? How could it have grown there? There was just a couple of polyps on a frag stone. It is pale minty green and sometimes I think I see a pinking purple hue in the center area.

How do I take care of this?? I have it high up on my frag rack.

 

[dubs]

it def look like a plate to me

 

[Marcellina]

Can a plate just grow from nothing like that? How do I take care of it? Do I need to put it in the sandbed>?

 

[jf2381]

what a nice surprise.
You can move it to the sand or leave it be.

 

[ryangrieder]

Wow, give me a minute, i have a pic from my friends tank that I posted asking what it is too, they look just like that when closed and his came out of no where at all.

 

[ryangrieder]

http://www.manhattanreefs.com/forum/identification/81809-coral-id.html

That's the link. Granted the pic I have shows it open, when it's closed it looks just like your picture. It's growing on a peace of live rock. It now has about 3-4 heads now. We don't know where it came from, it just appeared one day

 

[dubs]

it was there all along it just started to grow from a mini to something that u notice thats all coral come like that some times and u dont notice them till a few months down the line

 

[Marcellina]

http://www.manhattanreefs.com/forum/identification/81809-coral-id.html

That's the link. Granted the pic I have shows it open, when it's closed it looks just like your picture. It's growing on a peace of live rock. It now has about 3-4 heads now. We don't know where it came from, it just appeared one day

Wow I havent seem mine opened yet! I hope it looks like that, Its so weird? I dont have anything even remotely like that in my tank to explain its appearance. Is even on the frag rank.

Thank you for posting that link ... this is very interesting!

 

[Marcellina]

it was there all along it just started to grow from a mini to something that u notice thats all coral come like that some times and u dont notice them till a few months down the line

If the two zoa frags that I got last march were on a piece of live rock I would think that too but they were/are on a frag disk? Would something like this be attached on the zoa??

I guess zoa CAN attach to anything ... I just found one zoa polyp on the tip of my green slimer sps.

 

[asianer]

now that is a cool find, looking forward to seeing that grow.

 

[KathyC]

Marcella - yours may not be opening up more due to being closer to your lighting. Try moving it down to the sand bed and see if it starts opening after a few days
Nice find!

 

[reefboys]

Marcellina it's call a aussie fungia coral nice find,move it to the sand bed.