is my Montipora healthy

[jackdp]

The creature in question in my tank is not soft or "spongy". But apparently unbeknownst to me their are species of sponges which can be hard and brittle. The going theory now is that it may be a dead coral skeleton which and encrusting sponge has grown over.

 

[jackdp]

Bringing back this dead thread for some more insight from the more learned. At the beginning I bought a coral that was supposed to be montipora digitata. It was pink and bright but had no polyps...see below

As per the rest of this post and one at reefcentral with Eric Borneman, I never knew what this was. Mr. Borneman's opinion was that it was a dead coral skeleton that had been covered by a sponge and that it would die. Discussed here
http://reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=249722

Update: Over time the color did indeed fade and the entire thing died and became covered with corallines...or so I thought. Now the reason why I revive this thread. Below are recent pics of what I found when I decided to pull it up and discard...

And a close up view...

So now that I've discovered new growth and know that this isn't dead...again I put to you...What do you think it is and what are its requirements? Thanks for any help.

 

[BillyZ]

when I decided to pull it up and discard

I'm sorry I can't help with your actual question due to my own lack of experience with corals. But why would you want to discard that even if it is "dead"? Thats all your LR is basically... dead corals, old shells, fish bones etc all glued together by built up layers of coraline algae and other mineral deposits (basically). Unless this piece is taking up mass amounts of space in your tank, I'd leave it as let it act as more bio-filtration.

JMO Hopefully someone else can answer your actual question

 

[jackdp]

I wasn't really gonna discard it, just gonna move out of the way to make room for live stuff.