Awesome recovery from gulf live rock hitchhiker coral

[saltcreep1025]

I got two different coral hitchhikers on some uncured gulf live rock I bought. When i first got them, they were nothing but white skeleton, but after a week or so I started noticing they were coming back! Here is the first one shortly after I noticed.



And here is a picture of it today... maybe a month and a half later.



Here is the other one almost completely dead...



Here it is recovered a little bit...



And here it is today...



This rock was out of water, just covered in wet paper towel, for over 48 hours. Amazing what can survive!

[ivan_dalmatia]

That's cool are they Duncan's?

[saltcreep1025]

I havn't been able to identify it yet. I'll probably have to wait for it to grow a bit before I can tell. My best clue is that its a species native to the gulf.

[ivan_dalmatia]

Looks like some montastrea species?

[mr_X]

Florida rock is loaded with hitch hikers...good and bad. Lots of mantis shrimp as well! I was going to order some simply for the diverse assortment of macro algae you'll find on them.

[ivan_dalmatia]

I heard that a good way to get mantis out is to put the rock into a high salinity batch of water and they will try to escape, is that true?

[bskerrichard27]

I see these all the time when I'm scalloping they are all over the place...

[saltcreep1025]

Awesome mskerrichard27! That sounds like it would be fun.

[bskerrichard27]

Very much I actually use some of the fresh scallops for fish and eel food in my home mix and sometimes come home with a bunch of different macro algaes from gathering the scallops that I use in my refugium

[ivan_dalmatia]

Your so lucky, I can't do that in Toronto. I did grow up ont the Dalmatian cost and miss it a lot, snorkelling was my only thing