What Is This Thing??

[GroYurOwn]

thanks for bursting my bubble guys...they're special to me

 

[oddballs]

i wasnt saying they were rare i was saying to show the people in the zo forum what a paly or a palythoa really is .they seem to have protopalythoa and palythoa mixed up!

 

[gflat65]

I've never even seen one for sale... I see alot of what will likely be reclassified as Palythoa (normally called button polyps and normally in green or brown), but rarely see a thick mat with mouths like the well sunken coenechyme Paly above. I think one of the distinguishing factors is that Paly's take up sand into the mat and coenenchyme, where zoas do not, hence the reclassification of what we called Protopalythoa (primarily the people eater varieties) into the Zoanthus gigantus species. The common 'button polyps' have the sand, so I guess technically, they are paly's, though they haven't been directly reclassified yet.

 

[Al G Blenny]

Here ya go.
http://www.pacificeastaquaculture.com/Detail.aspx?ID=2869