I just read a surprizing artical about sweeper tenticals. I had believed that they were something that was a hard coral thing, but this artical was about how some soft corals can produce sweepers as well.
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These two defense mechanisms are utilized predominantly by hard corals. It is only until recently that sweeper tentacles have been observed in the soft corals. I had never read or heard about soft corals producing these tentacles, but in my friend Dr. Michael Fontana's 1000 gallon reef aquarium I observed a Leather coral (Sarcophyton sp.) producing very fine sweeper tentacles that were irritating a nearby zooanthid colony. This tentacle did not appear to be as well defined as the sweeper tentacles produced by the stony corals, but they appeared to produce the same result.
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http://www.marinedepot.com/aquarium_....asp?ast=&key=
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have two separate cabbage corals in my tank, and both have recently been seen extending long, filamentous tentacles. In each case, the point of origin appears to be a pore-like opening on the very edge of the body. The tentacles resemble spider web in their size and appearance, and consist of a central thread, with numerous, regularly spaced threads coming off at a right angle to the main one. At the longest, I estimate them to be 22 inches long.
My wife and I witnessed one of the cabbages snagging a ghost shrimp, and the shrimp was rapidly entangled in the tentacle, which retracted to draw the shrimp to the edge of the cabbage body. When we returned some four hours later, the shrimp had vanished.
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Well need to make sure some of my issues with my tank aren't related.
Chris
