What the..?

[Jeremy.XIII]

As some of you may have seen from my other post a friend of my hooked me up with a bunch of frags from his tank and he had this guy sitting on the bottom. Apparently it was a gift from another reefer that gave him his current tank and he had no idea what it is. He did tell me it stung his mushroom that was near it and it seems to have white-tipped tentacles that shoot out randomly until it's disturbed. The tentacles or arms or whatever that don't extend look almost like a toadstool's up close. I tried to get the best picture I could. Can anyone ID this?

 

[brettandlyndis]

Maybe galaxea coral: http://www.liveaquaria.com/product/prod_display.cfm?c=597+321+503&pcatid=503

Or torch coral: http://www.liveaquaria.com/product/prod_display.cfm?c=597+321+509&pcatid=509

Both are LPS coral

 

[oldbones]

The pic makes it look like a Galaxia. Very aggressive, can send out sweeper tentacles a surprising distance to sting it's neighbors.

 

[john_gully]

Looks like torch or long polyped plate.

 

[Jeremy.XIII]

Yeah it's definitely got sweepers out now with the lights off. I've got it on an island by itself away from everything else. Two questions -
First, should I remove it?
Second, is there any way to absolutely discern whether it's a torch or galaxea? The tentacles are very thin if that helps.

 

[DrewGriffin]

It looks like a ****ed off torch to me. It should extend once it feels more at home.

 

[Mock]

Galaxia.

 

[Jeremy.XIII]

I'm leaning towards galaxea, now. Pretty sure. I'm gonna see how it goes I have it on an island surrounded on two sides by glass in a corner. So hopefully it'll leave everything else alone because I think it's actually pretty cool.

 

[Gagonzalez]

Definitely Galaxea. You can see the equal cluster groupings typical of Galaxea and Torches usually have much longer tentacles.

 

[Jeremy.XIII]

Yeah that's the conclusion I came to from what I could find one. This guy's in a nice almost half-ball shape and torches seem to always be more free-formed.

 

[Tzwizzle]

A healthy cluster of Galaxea looks pretty sweet IMO. If you have the space I'd say leave it. As you've already figured out it will need a lot of room or it will sting it's neighbors.

 

[Jeremy.XIII]

That's why I was so torn about getting rid of it! Lol, probably one of my new favorite corals tbh.

 

[lostintheocean2]

looks like a torch, whats its skeleton look like? they are notorious for brown jelly disease

 

[RobinsonReef]

Definitely galaxia, saw one almost identical to this in my LFS the other day. beautiful coral in the current, but like others have said aggressive with its sweepers just be sure and don't put it upstream from others where its sweepers can get to them. The guy in the LFS told me he's seen it extend sweepers 4inches in the mornings when they come in. They had theirs downstream in a corner and it was happy and not bothering anything. I was very tempted to get it because of how pretty it was flowing around in the current but in my current setup I don't think I have a safe place to put it. Will definitely make space for one of these in my bigger reef that I will do next.