Identification help

max42

New Member
I need help identifying something. Sorry but my attempts to take a picture have not been usefull. Here is a description as best I can describe that I hope gets the point across. I have a rock with neon green mushrooms on it. About 2 weeks ago the mushrooms started shrinking (not sure why yet) or not expanding as they have been. Anyway... This now allowed me to view a section of the underlying rock. The are 3 small (pea size) tan, fuzzy blob areas. They resemble what you might see in spider webs. They are circular and do not apear to be growing. I have not tried to poke at them or extract them (yet). I'm curious if this brings anything to mind or if this could be contributing to the shrinking of all the mushrooms on the rock. Nothing has really changed in the tank, weekly water changes, other shrums doing fine in the tank. I have had these since Jan of this year. I did have a green star polyp encrusted rock die off on my about a month ago (my ony casualty so far).
While on this subject, there is one other "new" creature on this rock. The rock has several holes through it. One of the now uncovered holes shows something that looks like a cone shaped netting creature (kinda like a megaphone shape). The netting cone retracts kind of like a tube worm. The netting cone is about 1/2 inch at the outer opening and is recessed in the hole and does not come outside the opening.
Thoughts?
 

max42

New Member
I had lots of looks but no responses. Sorry wish I could take pics. I rexamined the rock last night and found that the netting/cone creature is some kind of tube worm. I turned the rock and could see the white tube. I also found another of these in a different are of my tank. I hope they are not bad.
I took a closer look at the tan fuzzy blob and I noticed that they all had what looked to be a small hole in the center, but again no sign of any life.
Any ideas?
 

spanko

Active Member
Tube worm sounds like a Vermetid snail, picture here.

Or a spaghetti worm

Both of which may be irritating the mushrooms and can be scraped off the rock.
The brown blob with the hole could be a sponge or a tunicate and may also be irritating the shrooms and can be scraped off.
 
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