what is this thing?

it has what looks like a stem sticking out of it and it will push its self and i seen it flip its self. but im going to take some better pic and ill have them on in a min.

 

this is what it looks like..



i think its some kind of coral because the stem part looks like it broken off from something.

 

bump

 

I would have the opistobranch experts at The Sea Slug Forum - Home Page ID it for you. Another posibility would be to PM pagojoe here.

 

Don't bother the mollusc guys. It's a cnidarian called the sea pansy. The genus is Renilla & there are several species. Think of it as a sea pen that's been flattened so the polyps are on the stalk. One big polyp on the underside is the peduncle or stalk that anchors it in place while smaller polyps on the upper side catch food & suck in/expel water. Normally they live in areas with high current. The feeding polyps create mucus nets to catch plankton. Keeping it healthy will require frequent spot feeding or a tank with lots of micro life.

 

Pagojoe is stumped on this one. I thought I might make a guess after the first pic, I was a lot less sure after the second one, and after the third pic...I'm sure I've never seen anything like that. I'm fairly certain it's not a sea slug/nudibranch and in fact is non-molluscan, although I don't know what it might be (it has the symmetry of an echinoderm, but the little papillae/protuberances are something I've never seen). If I had an idea where to start, I might be able to find it LOL. Leslie just showed up on 3reef though, and she will most likely be able to either ID it or get one of the other family experts to look at the pics and come up with an ID. Is it from Florida?

Cheers,



Don

 

Oh boy do I feel like an idiot now. I should have been able to ID it considering I kept one for years in my "Tank O' Crap". It's just a nickname for the tank I used for many fascinating rescued animals. My crinoids were my favorite.

I'm not sure that this is the best way to keep them alive, it's just the way I had success with it. It was in a tank with very deep and very fine sand. I didn't skim this tank (nor clean the glass on a regular occasion which is how that tank got it's nickname). I didn't really feed a whole lot of coral food other than phyto since it's azooxanthellate. I did do a wierd thing in this tank. I purposely maintained a bizarrely high amount of bristleworms and actually fed them silversides. (I believed, perhaps incorrectly, that bristleworm gametes where what kept my crinoids alive). Leslie, do you know if my strategy was correct or was I just lucky with this tank?

 

found on daytona beach florida
now that i know what it is, is it reef safe?
if it lives, will it grow into more then what it is now?
thanks

 

Reef safe and they just get bigger. Since I doubt you're not going to have a Tank O' Crap like I did, make sure you target feed it often like Leslie recommended.

 

i kinda want one... any chance you can hook me up?