Can corals just appear in a tank?

raidencmc

AC Members
Feb 19, 2006
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I have 2 things that I noticed on my rock. I did a bit of a cleanup job and moved some rock around in order to make some of my equipment more accessible. When I did I found something that looked like a coral that I have seen at the LFS. I can't find any pics that look like it and my camera will not focus on it what I try to take a picture. I know I am being vague. One looks like a tube and it has a base. It has something sticking out that is very thin like a hair. When I shine light on it it eventually retracts the hair like thing. I have not introduced anything new into the tank that it could have came from.
 
It does sound more like a worm than a coral.

Corals can seem as if they just suddenly appear because you know you didn't intentionally introduce it but it had to have been there before, or is a baby from a parent colony.
 
I think I have seen a few feather dusters in the tank. They have a white tube which looks hard and thing that looks like it is for catching things floating in the water. I did a search and the second thing looks like a tube worm. The first thing is a small patch smaller than a dime. It has purple, green, red, and orange color. It reminds me of a shetake(I know it is spelled wrong but it won't let me put the real name in cause it is a bad word) mushroom if you turned it inside out. The ribs would be facing up kind of like a cup. There are about 6 in the patch.
 
sh*take mushroom? and yes I put the asterick in to replace a star. Is it clearish brown or clear in color? Or is this the one that has lots of color? You could have zoanthids, palys, even aiptasia. Can't tell from the description.
 
sh*take mushroom? and yes I put the asterick in to replace a star. Is it clearish brown or clear in color? Or is this the one that has lots of color? You could have zoanthids, palys, even aiptasia. Can't tell from the description.

It is the one with color. It is looks cool. It does not look like zoanthids, palys, or aiptasia. The rock it is on is probably the newest rock in the tank. But it is maybe a year old(just guessing but it has been in there awhile). When I did my cleaning I moved that rock and the patch is located in a spot that was not easily visible before I moved it.
 
I bought a piece of LR from my LFS, took it home, and about an hour later I noticed that I had about 5 head of a button polyp...that was about a year ago and now I have around 50 heads!
 
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