What is this coral

[Reefgazer]

Hey guys, I bought a price of live rock with what I thought was dead coral, however since putting it in my tank the rock has gone from being white to a browny cookout with smallish tentacles, to me it looks a bit like a colony of close packed zoanthids. CAn anyone help me out with the identification if these guys

 

[Phranque]

It is a zoa colony, and a pretty darn nice one at that!! As far as the ID, there are so many out there........

 

[Luckysfrags]

If you touch it is it soft? To me it looks like a dead LPS coral like a flower pot coral.

 

[Reefgazer]

It's not dead it is soft and it expands and retracts in response to flow and lighting.

 

[Sniperhank]

It's a tad fuzzy, but it looks like a browned out brain coral.

 

[Reefgazer]

I can try and get a better photo tonight when I get home from work close up it looks similar to other zoas in my tank, I have just never seen them in a colony like that or brown ones or seen them retract the way they do, I will get a photo of them closed/retracted tonight when I get home to.

 

[Daniel Fishy]

Looks like some zoas from the East coast.

 

[kay-bee19]

Leptastrea (a small-polyped LPS encrusting coral).
The diameter of the polyps are somewhat less than soft coral zoanthids (approx 2mm-4mm).

When removed from the water you can tell that it's a stony coral. The polyps contract in a completely different way than zoa's and the skeleton becomes very evident; the white area's were either bleached polyps or coral skeleton.

Here's my orange leptastrea frag-colony for comparison:

Green-centered leptastrea colony (completely encrusted the live rock):

 

[Reefgazer]

Yeh that is exactly it, that's awesome thanks heaps, I think considering when I got it I believed it all to be bleached its doing fairly well.