Clear mushy stuff on green star polyps?

We received a rock covered in green star polyps from a friend about 3 or so months ago.. Sometime in between then and now it developed a whiteish clear gooey/mushy like substance covering the right side of the it. The polyps still come out during the day. It also has a powerhead pointing at it so I dont think it is because of lack of flow or anything like that.

The person we received the rock from had a very established tank and I noticed after we put the rock into our system I saw many little copepods moving around on it when the polyps were in when the light first turned on in the morning. Could this be some sort of copepod nest or something like that?

Tank details: 40gallon display and 10 gallon sump/fuge
fire shrimp and pistol shrimp, snails, jawfish, flame angel, watchmen, sandsifter, midas blenny, cleaner wrasse, 2 clowns, 50 lbs live rock and 50 lbs live sand. Protein skimmer in sump and 2x 600 gph koralias.. and lots of corals
Tank is approx. 3 - 4 months old and parameters are all in check

In the picture you can see the right side of it is covered in the stuff.. please help me out

 

Take that baby out, dip it in some iodine treatment or equiv and scrub it off with tooth brush, and rinse.

At first I thought sponge, but looks more like a fungus or bacterial mass.

 

Agreed - does not look good.

Isolate and treat!

 

+1 to the previous posts

 

I've never done that before.. can you recommend a good website or source with info on how to do it..also could you possibly recommend a good iodine product..thanks

 

This may help with your questions regarding the dip.

http://www.3reef.com/forums/coral/new-corals-11-11-2010-updated-pics-98557-2.html

You probably want to do that in the near future before it kills that coral or spreads to other corals.

Manually removing it with a tooth brush (outside the tank) and rinsing it in sw in a different container if you can not dip it is a good idea as well.

 

You think if I got some blue leg hermits and put them on there they would take care of it?

 

Nope.

Looks to me like you gotta treat the piece or run the risk of loosing it, or it spreading to other pieces.

No easy solution, but brushing the coral off and rinsing is a lot easier than going to the trouble of getting some hermit crabs in my opinion.

Sorry I am not telling you what you want to hear, but I am being honest.