TacticalDumb***
New member
Thank you to those who responded to my last post about my mystery polyp. All of you were wrong but you had me looking in the right direction. The mystery polyp was indeed an anemone but not one of the pest variety. It is a Banded Tube-Dwelling Anemone (Isarachnanthus nocturnus).
I apologize for the bad picture (I took it with my phone sand flash light as I don’t have access to a good camera yet) but there are tiny bands or stripes on the tentacles. It looks like a grey version of the second picture in person. These are nocturnal anemones which explains the light aversion that gave us all trouble. They also make their homes in small tubes like the rest of tube anemones except these are one of the ones that can make their homes in the holes in some rocks.
It was very difficult to observe it due to its aversion to light but I finally figured it out last night because it turned 90° in a elbows macaroni look that anemones will occasionally do. That let me know I was looking for an anemone of some sort and not something like a coral. From there some googling, comparing pictures and reading a little bit of a scientific article written about them for documentation of their discovery in the late 1970s I was able to finally confirm it’s identity as a Banded Tube-Dwelling Anemone. If you would like I can post updates about it here, just let me know.
I apologize for the bad picture (I took it with my phone sand flash light as I don’t have access to a good camera yet) but there are tiny bands or stripes on the tentacles. It looks like a grey version of the second picture in person. These are nocturnal anemones which explains the light aversion that gave us all trouble. They also make their homes in small tubes like the rest of tube anemones except these are one of the ones that can make their homes in the holes in some rocks.
It was very difficult to observe it due to its aversion to light but I finally figured it out last night because it turned 90° in a elbows macaroni look that anemones will occasionally do. That let me know I was looking for an anemone of some sort and not something like a coral. From there some googling, comparing pictures and reading a little bit of a scientific article written about them for documentation of their discovery in the late 1970s I was able to finally confirm it’s identity as a Banded Tube-Dwelling Anemone. If you would like I can post updates about it here, just let me know.
