Mini anenomes & feather dusters

[kp1917]

I had my sister in law over last night and she thought that all of my little clear anenome looking creatures were "bad" and would sting anything they could. I'm sure that all of us have these and I was wondering how big they get over time and what the heck they are???

Thanks,

KP

 

[hdtran]

Kyle,

Do a search on "cup coral" or "phyllangia." You'll find pictures posted here and elsewhere at RC.

I'm going to wager that that's what you have. If so, those are (nonphotosynthetic) corals.

 

[Bax]

KP

If you go on the TBS web site they list most of the stuff you'll see on the rock. Then you can search from the RC home page and also go to liveaquaria.com and search there as well, lots of good info on the critters.

Hy

What should we be feeding the filter feeders & corals on the TBS. So far I've been using only baby brine and Cyclopeze, but not sure if that's enough or what else to feed. And I don't want to feed items that won't be eaten. Should probably start a thread on that. I was tkinking of getting some DTs as I've read good things. I know from past posts you run sumpless, as do I, at least for now, so you must be confident that all things you feed are being consumed. Please, share your recipie.

 

[PRC]

KP, most likely, like Hy says, they're probably Phyllangia. Take a look here to see if this is what you have http://reefcentral.com/gallery/data/562/36151Cup_coral_3.jpg . The main clue is that, if it has a visible skeleton it's a coral, if not then you can start worrying. Check out my gallery for more photos of TBS hitchhikers. IME all of the corals that come on TBS LR including cup, tube, starlet and caribbean rose (or brain) corals will all accept most meaty foods. Often they'll accept larger chunks than you'd expect. Not that I'd recommend it, but I actually caught one of my cup corals ingesting a hermit crab (sans shell, of course) once. I usually feed mine mysis shrimp or cut up raw shrimp from the fish market. They also eat Formula one small pellets. I do try to do at least some target feeding regularly to avoid too much waste.
I feed spray dried phyto occasionally and the porcelain crabs definitely go into overdrive, but they seem to do fine without it as well.

 

[hdtran]

If you want, you can dose DT's or other prepared phytoplankton (Kent's phyto or microvert) once in a while for your feather dusters, etc.

For the corals, just feed your tank (I assume you've got fish). Some of the stuff that falls down will land on the corals, and feed it. I alternate a variety of frozen (brine, formula 1, etc.) and dried (flake, pellets). If you want to be obsessive, use a turkey baster to target feed the corals, but I don't think you need to.

Very comical to see a coral maybe pencil eraser size try to swallow a chunk of frozen-defrosted formula 1!

I have a tang, and put in Nori once a day. The tang has horrible table manners, and shreds the Nori while eating it, so there's pieces of Nori floating around. The snails, hermits, porcelain and red emerald crabs love the Nori when it gets within claw range.