This Coral Is Driving Me Crazy!

[Jamie2337]

OK..I cannot figure out what this thing is. My husband thought it was dead and I was begining to believe him. I have poked it trying to get it to retract...it would do nothing. Then, this morning its mouth was wide open. Weird. Here is a pic. I have posted before and was maybe mushroom, brain, Musside, possibly Lobophyllia...maybe these pis would help:

 

[moriartiholmes]

Cat's eye coral? I forget the scientific name. They're usually fleshy though.

 

[annetate]

it looks like a flower anenome that is sucked in?

 

[Sk8r]

Looks like an elephant ear mushroom with a fish in its gut, in one way of looking at it; looking at the photo again, it looks more like stony coral.

 

[Stephany]

Wow! Feeding tentacles. Feed it!

When I was over there, she prodded it with some tongs, and it didn't shrink up much at all. Enough so that slight ridges with small proccesses were visible, but I couldn't tell if it was an actual skeleton. I was thinking lobo last night when I was looking through Borneman's coral book.. but it's a totally separate corallite... so I don't know.
I'm pretty positive it's not a brain or scolymia... doesn't fluff up enough.

 

[Jamie2337]

The feeding tentacles came out right in front of me this morning when I was feeding some pellets. It sucked 2 or 3 in really fast. 2 months and it has done nothing, then all of a sudden "feed me." Weird!

 

[RandyO]

Interesting piece.

How big is it? And is it something that came on a piece of live rock, or is it a separate coral you purchased?

Try to get a picture of it when it's completely closed. A good view of the skeleton is very helpful. If you have a plastic ruler, try to measure the size of the corallite when it's closed.

Judging from the pics it could be a bunch of things, but I'd lean towards a Musside.

 

[coralnut99]

Could be a single head of Caulestrea, or a small open brain.

 

[Stephany]

One other thing on the texture... it seems much more tougher than a caulastrea..
Like, my caulastrea tissue I can move around, or if I spray water at it through my kent sea squirt, I can even see the tissue indent at the pressure of the water.
The tissue on this seemed a lot more tough.

 

[moriartiholmes]

OK found a pic of the coral I was thinking:

http://species.fishindex.com/photo_3292cynarina_lacrymalis_cats_eye_coral.html

 

[dalbrecht]

I'm leaning towards a mussidae

 

[becon776]

looks like a mussidae

 

[Gary Majchrzak]

Ditto Randy's reply. We need more to go on.

 

[Jamie2337]

It is about the size of a $1 coin. It never realy closes up that I have seen. It always looks the same, except today when I saw its feeding tenticles out. I tried to poke it once to get it to withdraw into its skeleton, but it hardly did anything...shrunk a little bit, but didn't close like you would expect.

It came with the tank. He had several frags and this was one of them.

I have yet to see any sort of a skeleton. I will try to get some pics if I do! Thanks!