Zoanthid or Cup Coral or What?

Posted June 1st, 2011 by islandbarb

Images:

Perhaps someone could help me identify what these are. First I thought some sort of cup-coral, but there seems to be 2 rows of polyps and I thought corals only had one row around the opening. (Or am I wrong?) That would lead to zoanthids perhaps. I can't find anything in the Reef Set that looks anything like them. Unless I've missed something or have looked in the wrong place. They also don't seem to fit the corallimorphs description either.I've looked on line at other ID sites and I can't find anything that looks like these.

Thanks in advance,

Island Barb -Just a snorkeler

Great Star Coral

Submitted by pipehorse on Thu, 06/02/2011 - 05:27.

This is Great Star Coral, Montastrea cavernosa.

I didn't see a resemblance!

Submitted by islandbarb on Thu, 06/02/2011 - 19:54.

Interesting. The magnified pictures in the Reef Set don't look anything like my samples. My pictures show very "plump" and smooshed together individuals and the ones in the Reef Set look more like firm, very individualized bumps with space around each individual. That's what threw me off. Now, with your help, I was able to search the Internet and found similar examples to mine at http://coralpedia.bio.warwick.ac.uk/en/corals/montastraea_cavernosa.html

Thanks for pointing me in the right direction!