What is this? Should I be worried?

ReefGrrl · #1 10-21-2015, 06:42 PM

Noticed this on the glass a few minutes ago. It looks like a tiny pink snail with a bunch of knobbly legs radiating out. It's on the glass and actually has a piece of red seaweed clutched in it's, um, legs/tentacles/arms.

Should I be worried? I think it might be some sort of hydroid but even after searching for about an hour I can't find anything that looks exactly like it.

I'm sorry the photo is so blurred - I love my ipad camera except when I hate my ipad camera - depth of field is a crapshoot. And the real camera has dead batteries.

Can anyone talk me off the ledge? Or make any eradication suggestions? I just looked again, thinking I might try another photo but it's nowhere in sight now.

Slyguy00 · #2 10-21-2015, 06:51 PM

Impossible to tell from that pic, but a good rule of thumb is if its questionable, pull it out of the tank.

ReefGrrl · #3 10-21-2015, 06:54 PM

Yeah, that photo is pretty bad, I'm sorry about that. I was hoping someone might recognize the critter from the description and the photo together.

The corals you see are actually reflections in the side glass, which is why they look so blurry. The critter is on the inside.

If I see it again, it's taking a baster ride to the drain!

F.H · #4 10-21-2015, 08:22 PM

Is it a tiny ball anemone?

ReefGrrl · #5 10-21-2015, 08:50 PM

Thanks for the suggestion - I wondered about that - I have lots of orange ball anemones all over the place and their tentacles are kind of thready and translucent with opaque white balls on the ends.

This little thing had short-ish knobbly opaque appendages of varying lengths. It appeared to be stuck to the glass by the body, and was holding the piece of seaweed in a couple of the appendages.

Roskoreef · #6 10-21-2015, 08:58 PM

Could it be a baby sea cucumber?

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ReefGrrl · #7 10-21-2015, 09:38 PM

Thanks for that idea - so I looked at photos of sea cucumbers in various growth phases and I don't think so. It was about 5mm across, so fairly large as compared to some critters. The pink-coloured body was about 3mm and appeared to have a white dot in the centre and was kind of dome-shaped.

My first impression when I first spotted it was that the head of a bristleworm had grabbed a piece of seaweed and crawled somehow up the glass - that's the colour pink it was. Then when I looked closer I saw it had these knobbly white legs.

I'm not sure whether I hope it appears again or not. Maybe it got sucked into the pump.