Aiptasia or dusters

[paine43]

last night i noticed that i had these lil feather duster looking things growning on one of my rocks, i just did a search and right now they look like the pics i've seen of baby aiptasia and lil dusters. they are very small so it's hard to get a pic of them, it's prob about 1/8 long white tube like attached to the rock and then a clear whitish fan. they only thing i added to my tank was a couple frags last week. any ideas or maybe some good sites with pics that i can id them from
tina

 

[dad300]

white tube says tome feather dusters... I've never seen aptaisia with a white tube... is the tube hard? Aptaisia doesn't have a hard tube..

 

[NateHanson]

If it comes out of a hard white tube it's a duster and nothing to worry about.

 

[paine43]

how do i check it the tube is hard can i just grab the thing?

 

[NateHanson]

yeah. just poke it.

But they should really look quite different. Aptasia are translucent brown, while the calcerous tube that feather dusters make is totally opaque white. Also feather dusters have very fine mesh-like "tentacles", while aptasia has fleshy tentacles.

If you google "aptasia" or "feather duster" I'm sure you'll find some pictures.

Nate

 

[paine43]

yeah right now they are just so small it's so hard to tell.

 

[Nikkoli110]

I thought the same thing with my tank, when I added new rocks. I had them all over the place....but you can tell the difference. I actually just found my first aiptasia on a rock of zoo's...they are real different. I thought my featherdusters were going to stay microscopic, but they are actually getting big, one is up to about 1 inch long, and the little feathers part is about 1/4 long.

 

[paine43]

i found this tonight!

 

[dz6t]

that is a rock anemone, bad guy, kill them, kill them all.

 

[paine43]

thats what i thought i killed this one last night with a pasty pickeling lime.

 

[Greg Hiller]

Good info above. If you feed Aiptasia chunky type food they will capture it. Feather dusters can only eat very finely divided food. Aiptasia can pull into the small hole they might have their foot in, but not nearly as fast as the blink of an eye speed that feather dusters can move.