What Are These?

[Donya]

Some pastel pink, hard, branching things have been showing up on my live rock and I don't know what they are. They are a few millimeters high, and look kind of like this:

They are too small for me to get a photo of...they look like miniature coral, but I can't see any pores on them (though it could just be that my eyes aren't good enough and I don't have enough magnification). Is there a type of algae that looks like that? I have regular magenta/red coraline algae growing as well, but the little branching things look nothing like it.

 

[Mr Miagi]

Could be a great deal of things. Without pics its realy hard to tell. Id look through some books if you have any. Also, there are some good sites about 'hitchhikers' on your LR with full macro pics that might help you get that much closer to an ID. Use google to find some sites, and browse there pics.

 

[Donya]

Thanks for the reply; I checked my books but they havn't been any help unfortunately. It could be because I need to get more new books...The closest thing I found on the web were red foraminifera, but they still look a lot different from what I've got. They look like a cross between these two pics:

http/www.marine.uq.edu.au/ohg/acid/Pink-coral.jpg coral
http/www.hrw.com/science/si-science/biol...ges/Unkn-01.jpg red algae? The weird shading is confusing me there.

I took the rocks in question out to see if I could get a higher magnification with a different handlense, and I saw several pores structures dotted around the pink things. They are so small I can't get my camera to focus on them (old digital camera with bad upclose focus). They're very brittle too...a small piece of the one of the tips chinked off one when I bumped it by accident

If it can't be narrowed down much based on the description, is there any bad/toxic/poisinous stuff that is included in the group of things it could be, or am I looking at a range of stuff that is relatively harmless?

 

[steelhealr]

If they have pores and they were sponges, exposing them to air will be the end of them. If they survived the removal, you can exclude sponges. SH

 

[Donya]

Darnit! I know about the air thing but that didn't even occur to me that they could be (or were) sponges. Thanks for the input.

 

[Donya]

The pink things doth growith. There are some new "branches" on one, so...I guess sponges are ruled out since they wern't killed by air exposure. After figuring out what these things are I'm going to have real fun with the last live rock I baught...all maner of gunk on it

 

[Opcn]

small sponges may sometimes partially survive air exposure.

 

[Donya]

Is there a way to conclusively tell if they're sponges other than waiting for dieoff from air exposure? I don't see any evidence of them being hollow, but I don't know if all sponges are like that.

I think I at least know what dead sponges look like now...there were a bunch of very dead floppy things on the last piece of LR I got. When pulled back into shape they looked like sponge pictures I've seen.