Any help IDing these please

[angnak]

Went to a friend's house today and he has a crazy amount of these in his tank. What are they? He had no idea either and said he hasn't seen any changes in his tank so he isn't worried about them. Quality is a little low but they are small so I zoomed in on the pic. They are about the size of the sand he has for his sand bed. Coarse, small pebbly (is that a word?) like sand. The top layer of his sand is basically these things. They attach to the glass and rocks too. These are all individual, none are growing together and he says they don't get any bigger than those in the pic. Look kind of like miniature shark eggs but pink. Kind of pink purple color with that white dot in them. Here is the original pic. Notice the couple tube worms on the right and in the middle for size comparison.

 

[sirrealism]

Maybe some kind of macro algae. But thats just a guess

 

[BigAl07]

At first I thought it might be Halimeda but I've never seen it stay so small or low growing.

 

[sirrealism]

That was my thought also. but there are so many different species. Is it hard or soft? is it like a leaf?

 

[angnak]

It does have that shape of halimeda but they aren't growing together. All individual. They do clump together on the sand bed though but can be pulled apart easily when the cleaning magnet swoops by. I can break them but they aren't soft, kind of crispy.

 

[sirrealism]

Thats very interesting. Does your friend have any tangs? I would say its some kind of macro and like your friend I would not stress it to much as i bet they are pretty easy to remove but macro is used to control N03 and P04 so I would think his system is doing well. If they were in my tank I would prob leave them alone 2.