What is this and what should I do about it?

[Mike Dekkers]

Hello All
I am new to saltwater reef, my tank has been set up for six months, some zoos and mushrooms and two damsels. Every thing has been doing great and looks very healthy, I have a medium size green star xenia encrusted rock that has been in my tank for four months and has become somewhat overgrown. At my last waterchange I pulled it out and put it in a bucket of tank saltwater so that I could trim back some of the growth on the bottom, it was moving onto the rock below it. about two weeks later I noticed that in the area that I had trimed it back there appears to be a white fungus growing up from this area. I have searched the web as it has been one of my best allies in learning about this hobby but have found nothing to tell me what to do or how to treat this. I am thinking that I should clean this off the rock by scraping it down to bare rock. has anyone had anything like this? any suggestions would be welcome.
Thanks

 

[ChrisRD]

Hey Mike and :welcome:

Can you desribe the consistency of this stuff?

 

[Len]

:welcome:

It sounds like you have a sponge or tunicate growing in its place, both of which are harmless. I wouldn't worry about it.

 

[ChrisRD]

Heh, that's where I was going with the question... ...Len beat me to it though... :wink:

 

[Mike Dekkers]

Hi Guys thanks for the response I am going to try to insert a pic

 

[Anonymous]

Great picture and welcome! Looks like a sponge to me, which is common and no problem. I have a colony that is has a vivid orange sponge growing with it. The only thing you need to be careful of is that if you take that specimen out of the water and expose that sponge to air it can die off and make one heck of a mess (been there, done that).

FWIW, that is either Pachyclavularia sp. or Briareum sp. (I can't tell exactly I'm not that up on my taxonomy) it's definitely not Xenia.