Blue polyps (clavularia sp.) how exactly do they spread?

S

sfsuphysics

Active member
So I got some of these pretty polyps for free a bit ago, they were isolated on a rock, so spreading did not occur through direct contact. Now they exist on just about every rock in my tank, including growing on coraline that is on the back glass!

Now I'm not adverse to the idea of them in the tank, it's my softie tank that I'm letting go wild (i.e. minimal influence from me, let it grow like it wants) but I have some ideas in the future for moving stuff around to hook the water supplies of multiple tanks up but I wanted to know how these suckers spread.

I don't know if they'd be an irritant for SPS, there's like 1 SPS coral in my softie tank, a chip of a orange/pink cap that was on a rock that has took off fairly well in there, but doesn't have any polyps near him, although he is growing around palythoas so who knows.

A couple ideas I have about how they spread, and please if someone knows the answer pipe up!
1- They somehow detach and get into the water column only to take up residence someplace else. This is my biggest fear, because a hooked water supply means they could potential end up there. Now I don't have a refugium hooked up to the tank, but if I did it might be a good way to test this hypothesis.

2: They're being carried around the tank. I have a resident tuxedo urchin that loves to move things around and wear it. Now while I haven't seen any polyps on him specifically they are small, and I have seen him wearing an anthelia wig for a few months, where it actually tripled in size until I finally manually removed it. So maybe this urchin is the cause for it. This would be favorable since the urchin wouldn't be moving through the water pipes (at least I hope not!)

So anyone know the true answer? I've seen other threads on other boards where everyone claims they don't spread fast at all, but I either have a "green thumb" or they're all full of it!
 
woudl you care to send em arock with these? =) they spread somewaht like xenia. but mostly through fission where they leave a lil bit of themselves next to each clean area and whala new polyp. comes.
 
See that's the point, they exist in place where fission could not explain how they got there. So either than also get waterborne, or my damn urchin is spreading them around.

But they're fine in a softy tank as far as I can tell, but I'd be worried if they were connected to my stony tank.
 
Well unsure what they're called, and not going to argue semantics on it they are what they are. But I hope they don't do the egg thing, because that means my soft tank will need to forever be isolated from my stony tank (which probably is the way it should be... but I really wanted to toss my softie tank into a lagoon as a run off of the stony tank.

here's some pictures I took of them.

A really close up macro I took a while back, a little haze from the gunk of the glass, but you can get the idea of the structure of the coral.
c7bluecloveup6.jpg


Here's a shot I took this morning not so macro shot to give you an idea of size/growth, but only my blue bulbs are on now so white balancing threw the colors a bit on the polyps, the other items in the picture are true to color though (strange... think it's a blue over compensation).
blueoz7.jpg


Hell I tried to give these away locally, and no one wants them... of course it could be because of the algae that's on the rocks as well :D
 
I wish you were nearby cause I'd take any you had to give as long as these don't harm anything.
Do you have yours under halides? Mine were blue at first but I have them under strong lighting and they turned deep purple. Awesome either way.
 
I originally kept 4 x 54w T5s over the 24" tall tank, 2x 10000k, 2x blue, and had that on maybe 12 hours a day, recently switched it up with an old 175w dual ballast I had, where I put a couple 12,000k reeflux bulbs over it, however I only have those on about 4 hours a day w 2x54 blue bulbs on 12hrs. While I haven't seen any change in color really, I do notice some things are stretching a bit more up... hope it's not a sign of too little light getting into the tank.
 
If you ever come towards Vegas, I'd love to take some of these beauties off your hands! I've been dying to find something blue for my little 60 gallon, and I saw these recently and just love them! I've been trying to get my LFS to set me up a frag but they're not budging at all. So....let me know! :)
 
Well if you, or anyone else for that matter, is in the San Francisco area let me know I'll give you a rock with some of the polyps on it. Seriously I toss in rocks and within a month or two they're seeded with these polyps! But you gotta take algae that might be on them too :D

I would toss them in a thermos and mail if you paid for thermos & postage, but I don't really want to deal with a bunch of people sending me a thermos right now! :D Maybe in a few weeks when I'm a little less busy.
 
Re: Blue polyps (clavularia sp.) how exactly do they spread?

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=12705702#post12705702 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by sfsuphysics
So I got some of these pretty polyps for free a bit ago, they were isolated on a rock, so spreading did not occur through direct contact. Now they exist on just about every rock in my tank, including growing on coraline that is on the back glass!
Click to expand...

I also have a small colony of these guys. I had them in the main path of my 150W MH and they turned purple so I moved them to a shady area in the back of my tank a few months ago and they turned blue again very quickly.

Why do I mention this? Well like sfsuphysics I now have little tiny polyps sprouting up like weeds all over my base rock. I do not have an urchin though, so some sort of waterborne spore seems the most likely.

I also find it interesting that this colony has been in my tank for about 9 months without really doing anything (other than looking pretty), but within about 1.5 months of moving them to the back of the tank I am finding more and more polyps all over my tank. They haven't caused me any problems so far and the wife really likes the idea of a carpet of these things, but I am keeping a close eye on my fledgling SPS colonies!

Conjecture: Could these things be sending out spores because they are not happy? When I moved it to the back of the tank was it not getting enough light and is simply trying to keep the colony going? Vise versa could also be true, they are very happy back there and want to share the wealth.

I have some free rubble laying around in my tank but so far I none of it has been 'colonized.' So no sharing from me just yet ;)
 
I love those blue cloves, I bought a colony and broke into a few small pieces and they've spread like crazy.

The two colonies up front were small frags a month ago.
hjfhjf.jpg
 
It doesn't appear to "bother" the other corals huh? In your pic (nice nano btw), are those small button polyps mixed in on the the front rock on the sand (hard to see)? And in sfsuphysics' pic, they seem to be getting along well with his mushrooms....just wondered if they play nice with others in general?

Sure would like to get a small frag of those guys...like I said our LFS here has them but won't set up or break off a frag. Sounds like all you guys in Cali have them coming and going! Love the pics everyone :)
 
<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=12771836#post12771836 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by JAMDivers
It doesn't appear to "bother" the other corals huh? In your pic (nice nano btw), are those small button polyps mixed in on the the front rock on the sand (hard to see)? And in sfsuphysics' pic, they seem to be getting along well with his mushrooms....just wondered if they play nice with others in general?

Sure would like to get a small frag of those guys...like I said our LFS here has them but won't set up or break off a frag. Sounds like all you guys in Cali have them coming and going! Love the pics everyone :)
Click to expand...

They mix with everything, I see them on so many other corals at lfs's like lps and sps colonies. Their extremely easy to find in California, every fish shop around the bay seems to have large colonies of them. Check out lucky goldfish in Oakland if you're ever in the bay area.
 
Just noticed they're right up against my solitary SPS in the tank, lets see if I get a nice pink rim orange monti cap with blue polyps now :D Although I'll see if they do anything "bad" to it.
 
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