Please ID Hitchhikers

[Ziggy953]

That is one of the wildest looking things I've ever seen. I have no idea what the heck it is. If you don't mind I'm going to forward a copy of that pic to a couple reef buddies I have that are pretty good at figuring things out or at least pointing me in the right direction. My curiosity is going nuts now.

[Ziggy953]

Look up :
Leptastrea sp.

[Kurt_Nelson]

I found a picture in Veron's coral book that looks dang near exact to that last picture (complete with the striped looking base)... except it describes it as a solitary coral that lives on substrate - kind of like a fungia. Perhaps they start as colonies like fungia?

Anyway... the coral I'm looking at is a Heterocyathus aequicostatus, part of the Carylphylliidae family. I did a quick look on the web for a picture, but couldn't really find one. Don't really feel like scanning a copyrighted picture and posting it, so you may do a little Googling with that name and see if you can find anything.

[Ducaroo]

Wow! You guys are amazing. I did a search for Leptastrea sp., then did a search for Heterocyathus aequicostatus. I found the Heterocyathus aequicostatus at a website, but while scrolling through the other photos, I found a pic of a specimen that looks very much like mine, but bigger. It's labeled as Pseudosiderastrea tayami of the Siderastreidae family. Of course, being a newbie, it's all Latin to me. What is it? What would be a good reference for a newbie to get a handle on the classification, morphology, etc. of corals?

[Kurt_Nelson]

You're probably the better judge of what you have, well... since you have it... but Pseudosiderastrea seems more colonial to me. It's a colony of polyps that share the walls of their skeleton. Your pictures seem to be a group of individual polyps - each one its own thing.

The coral I noted is part of the Caryophyllidae Family. Another related to that is Caryophyllia... you might Google Image that name and I think you'll find a bunch similiar to your pictures. There's also Phyllangia... but that appears to be an Atlantic species and not a Pacific. I'm assuming your rock came from the South Pacific?

[Ziggy953]

It was also suggested to me that it could be a type of Blastomussa that is very unhappy. I have blastos and I'm not so sure I agree with that assessment.

Kurt this is what I found for the coral you listed. Doesn't really look like it to me. This coral looks more like the way a bubble coral might grow. Anyway here is the link to it.

Heterocyathus Aequicostatus

While searching and looking at pics I found this to be a possibility as well. Keep in mind that your coral is stressed and bleached and working on coming back so don't focus on the color. It's possible it is Galaxea fascicularis The polyp structure is similar to some extent. I would photograph the coral you have every couple of days to document the changes it goes through.

I agree with Kurt that it's probably not Pseudosiderastrea tayami, each poly shares a wall as he mentioned and yours have clearly defined polyp structure. I think as the coral gets happy again an shows some color we might be able to figure out what it is. It was also suggeted to me that you present it with some mysis to see if it reacts by extending feeder tentacles. Just a thought...I'm still looking.....

[Kurt_Nelson]

Y'know... when I was leafing through some books, I paused on the Galaxea page - there are a lot of similarities.