Red spongy looking type stuff in tank ID?

[tiredoldman]

I have a strange dark red spongy looking growths in my 40 breeder reef tank. It is close to red slime algae color but is semi hard and solid. i have actually peeled a few of the bigger golf ball size pieces off of the rocks and they stay together and live on the sand bed just fine. The center is a grayish white color where it was attached to the original rock. It is fairly slow growing doubling in size every month or so. My tank levels are all OK and I have 285 watts of compact fluorescent 50/50 bulbs on the top with approximately 800 gph in filtration. My 2 hard corals are all nice and full so I doubt it is anything truely nasty. Sorry for no pictures if needed I can get my kids to post some.

 

[meowzer]

What would we do w/o our kids..LOL...I think a pic might help though....
you say it is spongy looking....but it's hard????

 

[btldreef]

A pic would work wonders here ...
I'm thinking it's a type of algae, have you looked at the algae identification thread put together by spanko?

 

[tiredoldman]

Looks like the Peyssonnelia sp in spankos thread except mine seem to want to grow upward into balls rather than spreading all over every thing. I will try to post a pic tomorrow

 

[btldreef]

I assumed it was this, but never remember the name. I had to go look at his thread as well. It might just be growing upwards towards the light, remember, after all it is an algae. I may also be the beginning of Mesophyllum mesomorphum, mine never looked as good as his picture shows. You might want to google image both for more examples.