Orange algae smothering euphyllia

[evilcatfish]

Hi guys

Had my reef tank for a year now but still think of myself as a complete newb at all this.

I've recently noticed that one of the heads on my torch is very retracted. Upon closer inspection I noticed that there is a rust coloured substance growing on the live rock that has grown up the skeleton of the torch and is smothering it. I have no idea what this growth is but it has a whitish fungus coating over the top of it that you won't be able to see on the photo as it is extremely fine.

I've read about Orange coraline, diatoms and cyano but none seem to fit the bill here. We had cyano and diatoms when the tank was new and this does not look like those but I'm coming up black on what this could be. Can anyone suggest what it might be?

My parameters are:
Size - 630 litre with sump
Ammonia - 0
Nitrite - 0
Nitrite - 0
Ph - 8.2
Phosphate - somewhere around 0.01-0.02 although I think the reading is inaccurate as we have and have always had to much algae growth in tank despite running gfo and carbon.

Hope someone has seen this before and can advise as I'm worried about the torch and this is the first time in the hobby that hard research has turned up a blank

 

[dbraun15]

That's a sponge, not algae. You can try peeling the sponge off of the coral if it is overtaking it. Hope that helps.

 

[Tom Blevins]

I have this sponge to and it likes the bottoms of my sticks as well, really irritates them too!

 

[evilcatfish]

Wow, ok. Wasn't expecting that response. Thanks for that. I'll start researching sponges then I guess. Are they a bad thing to have in a reef tank? I've seen pictures of some beautiful looking sponges but never looked into keeping them. Didn't think you were likely to get one as a hitchhiker

 

[ahiggins]

It does look like a sponge but....I thought sponges grow out of control like that with higher nutrients?

 

[evilcatfish]

To be honest I suspect there are high phosphates that the test kit is not picking up as we have battled algae since the tank was set up. Phosphates came up really low even before we started running gfo but always thought the algae was absorbing the phosphates too fast for the test kit to detect it. Would sponges feed off phosphates?