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iwishtofish
06/23/2007, 10:22 PM
This came on my new live rock. Does anyone know what it is?

http://i211.photobucket.com/albums/bb113/bjdoyle64/whatisit.jpg

eunado
06/23/2007, 10:35 PM
They are bright red forams (Homotrema rubrum). They are harmless little guys. I have them all over my liverock.

iwishtofish
06/23/2007, 10:38 PM
Glad to hear they are harmless! Are they corals? I take it from your description they never get big? Thanks for the ID.

eunado
06/23/2007, 10:56 PM
Yours is about full grown, although it will likely get a deeper red over time.

Here is a link I found on google: if you scroll down towards the bottom of the page you will see the text below as well as a picture.

http://www.reefkeeping.com/issues/2003-07/rs/index.php

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.

iwishtofish
06/23/2007, 11:10 PM
Thanks eunado, that's great! Very informative! So much to learn in this hobby. :)