Crawling Tongue

A few days ago I had to move my tongue coral. This thing moves along the sand bed. It moves at a pace that makes a snail look like it is reved up on Red Bull. Over the course of the last few months it moved from its home between the glass and live rock up to the front glass. It started out parallel to the glass and ended up perpendicular to it. I had to move it so I can clean the glass with my Mag Float glass cleaner.

I have seen the coral move itself at least twice. Each time it only moved a few millimeters. Just before moving the coral changes from brown to green and partially retracted its tentacles. Then, all at once it pushes itself by swelling the tissue that is in contact with the sand bed. It then extended its tentacles and turned brown again. It moves itself just a little bit and then goes back to being its normal sedentary self.


This time I'm going to watch it closely and document its progress as it moves. Here is a photo of its current location.