Spiney clear thing with tentacles???

Looks like we have a winner! Thanks! Mine looks exactly like the picture on the left, glad to know it won't hurt anything

K+

 

Should have known Incognito would bring it home. Nice link too.

 

Well done, Incognito! I would never have guessed the photo from the description (obviously) LOL.

 

Quick question - On that link from Incognito, it says to remove hydroids... I have a couple tiny ones that hang out on my glass, and they aren't much bigger than pods. Am I really supposed to try and remove them??

 

They sting pretty bad, you just have to be careful they don't get on anything else. I don't find them to grow very fast and there are a few varieties of them that show up in our tanks. I've left a lot of mine alone.... but that's in my FOWLR tanks.

Their patches tend to grow.... they don't just pop up in other places like say an appy can. It's kind of like GSP, from my experience.

 

Oh shoot... do you mean the medusa hydroid? Those I would leave alone unless you are breeding fish or have something like dwarf seahorses. I need to change that.... and proof read that guide again, I guess.

I was wondering how the stationary hydroids got up on your glass..... wrong critter *blush*

 

haha yes, I meant the dwarf hydroids... sorry, I should have clarified :

 

Ya, leave those guys alone... they won't hurt anything. They can be a pain in the booty though, when you are feeding out live brine to fish. Their numbers get crazy and can kill a small seahorse.

 

Fixed

The "More Info" will eventually explain when they are risky.

 

Not exactly. Gabby, thanks for emailing me. Your creature & the picture on the left in Incognito's link are not barnacles. They are polychaete worms in the family Flabelligeridae. Some flabelligerids live embedded in rock with only their head spines (modified bristles) sticking out. The two long appendages are feeding palps which spread strings of sticky mucus over the spines then remove the organic particles which drift into the strings. The other flexible appendages that occasionally occur are branchiae, used mainly to absorb oxygen from the water.

Here's a picture of a related species out of it's tube Pherusa plumosa

LionfishLair's hitchhiker page is pretty good although it would be nicer if they gave credit when they post other photographer's images. Keep in mind that web sites & id guides can really vary in quality from very accurate to really poor. Even the best have some mistakes in either id or info - I noticed that in addition to the mis-id'ed flabelligerid Lionfish also lists a coral gall crab (which is a true crab) as a squat lobster (which is not a true crab & more closely related to hermit crabs)