Help ID this growth

[RedDmon]

My friend has this white thing growing in his tank, the pictures are of it growing in his pipe organ, ad destroying it. Note that it has some kind of a "snorkel" like thing, please have a look and give me some feedback.

Any ideas?

 

[AMGReefer]

Some type of sponge.

 

[Ludwigia73]

Ditto sponge... peel it off best you can, or frag out the dead part of that pipe organ coral. Depending on how well your water chemistry's been you could probably dig out some skeleton with a spoon. If you keep up on all your chems, the skeleton's going to be pretty tough.

 

[laud]

Can you inject your system with lots of air bubbles? I imagine that may kill of the sponge.

 

[RedDmon]

I just mentioned the air thing, actually I suggested taking the pipe organ out of the tank for a minute and see if the sponge dies.

 

[ladybug5234]

looks like it could be a turnicate... ???

 

[RedDmon]

Turnicate? I'm not familiar with that term in salt water anyway.

 

[drpo21]

sponge, I had that same sponge all over my tank

 

[rydr119]

I agree with tunicate

 

[coralfragger101]

Definately Tunicate.

The circled portion gives it away. That is either where the water is taken in OR where the water is expelled (or both. I'm not exactly sure how they work).

 

[greenbean36191]

Nope, definitely a sponge. The structure you circled is the osculum, where the water flows out of the sponge.

Unfortunately, you'll probably have to control it by hand. While many sponges are sensitive to air exposure, not all sponges are. Shipping and acclimation in the hobby tends to weed out the species that are sensitive to air exposure so what we get as hitchhikers are the ones that tolerate air exposure well.

 

[coralfragger101]

Dang it. Oh well. Guess ya can't be right all the time.

Thanks for the correction.

 

[ladybug5234]

and yes, i meant tunicate... picky little booger!