Mysterious orange coral on live rock?

[Marc_P]

Hello! First post on this site, been googling and reading up on a ton of stuff on this site. First time registering though.

Anyways, I purchased a kenya tree that's attached to a live rock. I specifically bought this one because of this mysterious orange tube coral. It almost looks like a filter feeder because it has a mouth on the tip that opens and closes. It has about 4 tubes all coming from the center.

On the bottom of the rock i have removed another coral/anemone? It's incredibly small, the size of a button on your shirt, if not smaller than that. If you look closely you can see very tiny tentacles coming out of the top around it's mouth. Here are pictures of both.

 

[AlSimmons]

Those orange things look like harmless Tunicates. I'm not really sure about the other one. Does it have a skeleton at all?

 

[Marc_P]

It's very soft and closed up when I touch it or was in the process of moving it. Not sure what you mean by skeleton, but it doesn't seem to have anything hard inside of it.

 

[Marc_P]

I've also never heard of a tunicate before, if that's what it is. I did a little research on Google and here, I see they're filter feeders and considered an invertebrate? I couldn't find one on Google images that looked exactly like mine though. Is it like a feather duster as in there's a worm or organism living inside of the tubes?

 

[AlSimmons]

The link below might help.

http://www.reefkeeping.com/issues/2005-03/rs/index.php

 

[Marc_P]

Alright that gives some pretty good info on them but I still can't find a picture of one that looks exactly like mine. Also a lot of those seem to have the mouth open constantly. The one on my rock opens and closes individually, not synchronized.

 

[AlSimmons]

If you really want to find out exactly what kind of Tunicate you have you could look through the link below, but it might take awhile. (or not even be there)

http://www.saltcorner.com/AquariumLibrary/browsesectiongroups.php?SectionID=36&filter=0

 

[Marc_P]

http://www.saltcorner.com/AquariumLibrary/browsespecies.php?CritterID=3498&filter=0

This is the only one that looks close to What I have, except the picture they provide shows 2 mouths on 1 tube. Mine only has 1 mouth per tube and they open and close. Same color style though with the orange and red. So maybe it's closely related to it.