Frogspawn parasite?

[D2838]

I'm going to start by apologizing for the bad picture, I don't have a good camera and the frogspawn was already starting to inflate this morning by the time I got the picture.

My frogspawn hasn't been looking as good lately then I noticed this perfectly round tube coming up off one of the branches with what appears to be a snail in it because you can see a foot plate blocking the hole but if you look real close it looks like I can see some tentacles or eye spots sticking up from behind the plate from the top of the tube. The tube is in the center of the picture, slightly obscured by some frogspawn on the right and it's right above the hammer coral coral at the bottom, not sure how both corals ended up on one frag.

Anybody have any experience with this, I was just going to try and break that tube off , hoping he would be caught in there and not burrowed into the branch that he's on where he could get away by going down into the coral when I start messing with his tube. It's hard to see in the picture but it looks like the tissue of the coral is split like something has grazed/peeled the top layer of tissue off in several places.

 

[cloak]

The tube your seeing might be a vermetid snail. Check this out.

http://www.reefkeeping.com/issues/2005-01/rs/index.php

HTH.

 

[D2838]

Looks like you hit it right on the head, figure 4 is an exact match Dendropoma sp. Looks like they are harmless, so that's good news, also not likely to proliferate in the tank according to the article. Also not likely to be causing my frogspawn damage so I'll have to keep searching for the culprit.

Thanks.