Foraminifera, Homotrema rubrum

[steelhealr]

Well...if I am wrong in my I.D., I'm going to put a big NEVERMIND at the end of this post. However, I couldn't figure out another hitchhiker in my tank until..well...now. I think I have it. I have a hitcher on one of my frags that is intensely red orange and has increased very slightly in size. It seems to have small bristles on it. I didn't believe it was a sponge, since, they are nearly impossible to keep in a nano tank. I did some research and I believe it is a foraminifera, homotrema rubrum. Here are the pix from my tank:

What I've read is that Foraminifera are single-celled protists with shells. Depending on the species, the shell may be made of organic compounds, sand grains and other particles cemented together, or crystalline calcite.

Here is a brief description from Ron Shimek:

Some of the most abundant forams that are found in our aquaria are spectacular. They are large and obvious and are often exceptionally abundant. And, unlike the remainder of the forams discussed in this article, they are not found in the sediments. As they don't look like anything else in our systems, they are often misidentified as small sponges, hydrocorals or stony corals. These foraminiferans belong to a peculiar foram species called Homotrema rubrum and it has a shell that may be orange, but is more typically hot pink or bright cherry red. The red coloration is due to an iron salt that is incorporated into the skeleton. Found growing on hard surfaces such as rocks, the calcareous shell looks like a small hydrocoral or a hard, spiky crystal with angular projections. Homotrema seldom get larger than an eighth or quarter of an inch in height, but their brilliant color renders them very obvious. They feed on particulate material in the tank's water, probably mostly bacterial aggregates they catch in fine filamentous protoplasmic strands which extend from the tips of the angular projections. There are similar white foraminiferan species found in aquaria. Their bodies look like small "spiky" versions of a stony coral, rather like nano-sized versions of bird's nest coral, Seriatopora hystrix. These foraminiferans have not been identified to species.

It keeps getting more interesting. Thought I'd post this and I'm going to add it to my main thread. Feel free to corroborate my ID or shoot me down. I'm always learning. SH