Anthony, macro?

[joelamb7467]

Anthony, do you have any idea what this is? It is about 1/2 inch and seems to be somewhat soft. It is dark reddish/purple with an almost orange flourescent fringe. It is in a lower light, medium flow part of the tank. My best guess would be some type of twig algae or possibly some type of lobophora. It sprouted from the rock a couple months back. I really like the look of it and would like to frag it if possible to put some in my other tank. If you think it would be possible to frag, would you have any tips. Thanks and sorry about the horrible pic.

 

[Samala]

Very interesting. It does kinda have the typical Lobophora plating kind of shape to it. But the overall red color with orange edges (new growth) suggests it belongs in Rhodophyta, with the red algaes, instead of the browns, which Lobophora belongs too. I'm going to look around and see if this guy is in any of my algae ID books. But so far, it qualifies for one of the cooler macros I've seen lately. Looks pretty small, size of a quarter or so?

>Sarah

 

[joelamb7467]

Yeah, about the size of a quarter. I am pretty new to reefing, and have no experience with things like this, and was wondering if it would be possible to frag it? Thanks a lot for the reply.

 

[Anthony Calfo]

tough pic... but looks like it has the qualities of Nemastoma species

use that genus name on a google image search and/or algae base.org search to see if you can compare images to your specimen.

Without a better pic... you are in the best/only position really to see/say.

 

[Samala]

Joe none of my books look close and I've gone through a few hundred algaebase.org family/genus type species and cant find anything close to this either. If you're willing to experiment a bit, let this guy grow out another few inches and the resulting growth pattern might tell us more about what it actually is. Red macroalgae ID is pretty troublesome.. for example for the popular 'red grape caulerpa' there are nearly ten different genuses (and over fifty species) that fit the description. IDing them to something sincere is pretty tough, especially off of just pictures. The algae biologists dont just rely on their eyes, they do a total morphological examination under the scope.

But we of course dont have to get so crazy. I would love to see you update the photo in a month or so to see how it grows.

Last.. considering its size, I wouldnt try to frag it just yet. It is possible to fragment macros but when they are holdfasted to rock, as yours is, I try to let them grow up a good bit before transplanting or fragmenting. Doing so now might make you lose the whole colony. Its still pretty small afterall.

>Sarah

 

[joelamb7467]

Sarah, Thanks for the work you put in trying to figure out what this is. It has actually almost doubled in size in the last week. Maybe Ill borrow my buddies camera and get a better pic in a few days.