Anemone on coral

I was given a coral today which had started to bleach at my lfs. They were going to trash it, so I told them id like to take it and see if I would have any luck with it in my tank. When I got it home I was inspecting it for any unwanted host when I saw a small anemone attached to it. I'm assuming it was aptasia. I removed it with a small knife and discarded it. Am I safe from this creature taking over my tank or is there a way it could grow back or still be there? I gave it a pretty hefty look over and could find nothing else there. Thanks for any input.

 

If you jsut cut a part of it off, it is possible for it to come back out, the way I got them off my one rock was take it out of the tank and nuked the rock.

 

it has a pretty good chance of coming back. if you leave just a few cells of them left alive, they can make a full recovery. they are very persistent. i would say you have about a 50/50 chance. if it does grow back, just inject it with some aphasia-be-gone product. chances are, if it does regrow, it will be focusing on regrowing itself first, then spreading, so even if it does regrow, you could probably contain it fairly easy, if you catch it at the right stage.

 

OK, he was very tiny and I scrapped the piece he was on very well and made sure I could get all visible parts. If you believe there is any chance for this anemone to come back I will remove the coral and discard it.

 

I'd say since u have scraped it off go back and check on it and maybe take a razor blade/knife and scrap a piece of the rock off where it was at just to be safe lol but keep an eye on it even though there is a chance of it coming back but don't toss it out yet...see what happens

 

Small amounts of the base could still be there. Do you have any kind of QT?

 

I will definitely watch it feverishly, these nuances are why I used all base rock and I would like to avoid them completely if possible.

 

well i also know that aptasia shrivels inside a rock or pores of the rock when touched (from my personal experience). so removing a chunk of the rock would be a smart thing to do, or you could always frag the coral and put it on a good rock.

 

I have no QT as of now and I'm still riding the fence on the whole to quarantine or not to quarantine. I have heard great arguments from both sides but I tend to lean towards low stress makes healthy fish. But in this case were dealing with a coral so its something that could help possibly. Its not exactly a real eye catcher of a coral because of the bleaching so if I were to remove it I would just discard of it unfortunately, as I have no money tied up in it atm.

 

The problem with watching it close is that when you cut them off like that they can release spores. It could now have spores on the rock and could be ready to release more.