Can anyone ID?

bklynmet · 02-02-2007, 05:39 PM

I had this on the rock that I got my GSPs on. It never had it polpys extened until about a month ago when I re-aquascaped. The GSP was about to overgorw it so I fragged it off the GSP rock.

It is encrusting and growing pretty well. I'm not sure if it's a monti or not. Anyone have an idea? It currently is about half-dollar size.

AquaGrizzly · 02-03-2007, 12:28 AM

It kind of looks like brarium? barium? bearium? (sp). It's an encrusting coral. The LFS by me has some of it for sale. I'm not even sure how it is spelled. I'm headed that way tomorrow... well today now. Need to get more cyclopeze. I'll see how to spell it when I go and you can try to look it up on the net somewhere.

Adnuces · 02-03-2007, 06:24 AM

Briareum......an encrusting type of polyp that is often called green star polyps......the mat is purplish in colour see the pic

I have some ot this taking over both my tanks......it looks like hair and flows nicely in the water flow. The picture you have above looks like it could be a monti......is the encrusting part hard or soft....in Briareum it is soft and rubbery and can be peeled off the rock.....

Adnuces · 02-03-2007, 06:24 AM

Also the polyp extension in your pic are short for it to be briareum......looks more and more like a monti.....can you get a different pic?

bklynmet · 02-03-2007, 04:31 PM

I can try for a better photo.... I know for sure it's not GSP as it has a stony base - kinda like coralline in texture - but unlike coralline, there are polyps comeing out of it.

bklynmet · 02-03-2007, 05:17 PM

Some photos from today..

Adnuces · 02-03-2007, 06:51 PM

Interesting if it is a hard stony encrusting I would presume it is an sps such as a monti.......how fast is it spreading....looks great and a good scoop

Junkzoo · 02-03-2007, 10:00 PM

I was gonna quess, encrusting gorgonian,,,,,had stuff that looked like that b4 also,,,,

Adnuces · 02-04-2007, 04:59 AM

are gorgonians hard stony encrusting???? briareum is an encrusting gorgonian though the mat is rubbery and peelable???......though it doesn't exactly resemble the pic....not sure really, what colour is it as the picture doesn't depict it well

grallster · 02-04-2007, 02:43 PM

It might be helpful to put something in the picture to give us some idea of the scale of things. The polyps at least appear to be larger than any montipora I've seen. Have you counted the number of tenctacles on each polyp? If there are 8/polyp then it is most likely some type of soft coral, gorgonian, sea pen, etc. (Octocorals). The only exception to this rule is the blue ridge coral (Heliopora).

Adnuces · 02-04-2007, 03:57 PM

You know on looking closer at those pictures it does look much like my briareum when it is just coming out and starting to extend it's polyps. I tried to count the tentacles and I believe there are 8. I believe monti has the polyps more imbedded in the mat....

bklynmet · 02-04-2007, 07:00 PM

The polyps are 2-4mm in size. It may be Briareum after looking at some photos... the thing is, most of the corals in the Briareum photos I saw look like different colored GSPs... there are 8 tentacles per polyp.

It does appear to be 'growing' relatively fast so based on the strong possibility it is a Briareum, I'm going to need to make sure it doesn't grow near other corals and smother them...

how about the game so far... 16-14... I'm glad it's not a blow out...

bklynmet · 02-11-2007, 07:47 PM

Ok, I was at Preuss Pets this weekend in Lansing and they had a coral extremely similar to this one I've been trying to ID. Blue-ridge helipora.
http://www.thesea.org/reef_aquarium/.../heliopora.php

The part that was dead was blue. It's currently regrowing over it. Therefore, based on this and what I saw at the store, I'm pretty confident on the ID.

bklynmet · 02-18-2007, 08:58 PM

I got confirmation that this is a blue-ridge heliopora last friday... I was scraping some polyps of GSP off the rock it was on when it 'popped off'. The underside (skeleton) was the bluest-blue I've ever seen in a coral - too bad it only shows up when the coral is dead... Happily, the coral is alive and doing well - polyps were out within 10 minutes of it being popped off. it appears to be a fast grower - starting to forms ridges and go vertical. So I can probably frag some by the end of the year - as I want a good mother colony to develop prior to fragging anything in my tank.