MischiefReef
Active Member
Hey guys, thanks in advance for any help. I’m hoping for some help IDing a wormlike hitch hiker based on description alone. I apologize I did not manage to get a photo of this thing as it only seemed to come out after lights off and it was super thin, the camera would not focus. I will try to give the best description that I can:
This was far thinner than a spaghetti worm, picture a single spider web strand. It was so thin that I saw it a few times and initially thought it was a single strand of hair algae attached on my plate coral. The length of it was about 6-7inches. It also had 2inch branches coming off of it at even segments. These branches were offset on each side. I attached a photo below of a ladder to illustrate the pattern of these branches. The plate coral this was on is sitting raised up on a frag rack and this thing was extending downwards and swaying in the flow. I only realized that it was not hair algae when I saw it twitch in an extending/retracting fashion. It was repeatedly extending its 6-7inch length and then retracting back into the underside of the coral within a split second. The branches seemed like they collapsed when it retracted but would extend out again in the same split second as the main “trunk”.
Closest thing I could find in my frantic forum search was branching or digitate hydroids, which caused me to panic and peroxide dip the plate. I think the dip killed the hitchhiker, but then I started to question my own ID of hydroids as I’ve never encountered them. I would still like to figure out what it was if anyone has even the slightest clue or even a guess please let me hear it. Thank you again!
Heres a picture representing what the structure of this creature looked like. The horizontal branches were about 2-3x longer in relation to this scale.
This was far thinner than a spaghetti worm, picture a single spider web strand. It was so thin that I saw it a few times and initially thought it was a single strand of hair algae attached on my plate coral. The length of it was about 6-7inches. It also had 2inch branches coming off of it at even segments. These branches were offset on each side. I attached a photo below of a ladder to illustrate the pattern of these branches. The plate coral this was on is sitting raised up on a frag rack and this thing was extending downwards and swaying in the flow. I only realized that it was not hair algae when I saw it twitch in an extending/retracting fashion. It was repeatedly extending its 6-7inch length and then retracting back into the underside of the coral within a split second. The branches seemed like they collapsed when it retracted but would extend out again in the same split second as the main “trunk”.
Closest thing I could find in my frantic forum search was branching or digitate hydroids, which caused me to panic and peroxide dip the plate. I think the dip killed the hitchhiker, but then I started to question my own ID of hydroids as I’ve never encountered them. I would still like to figure out what it was if anyone has even the slightest clue or even a guess please let me hear it. Thank you again!
Heres a picture representing what the structure of this creature looked like. The horizontal branches were about 2-3x longer in relation to this scale.
