Weird orange lump

[elysics]

After being absent for a week, i noticed a weird lump that i have never seen before sticking to the glass near the bottom amidst cyanos. Its roghly shaped like a kidney an is fluorescing brightly orange with some green parts, altough the green parts could also be a layer of green cyano. When i lightly poked it with a stick to dislodge it from the cyano and glass it felt soft and started to release/dissolve into/bleed clouds into the water that were also fluorescing orange. I then put it into a container to get a better picture and it kept releasing this cloud when disturbed, now the water in there is noticably pink, almost like a salifert alkalinity test.

What on earth could this be? My first idea was something rotting, like snail eggs or a dead snail that overgrew with cyano and started some anoxic process, but why would that fluoresce orange?

 

[vetteguy53081]

May be bubble algae covered in cyano

 

[Tumey]

I’m thinking nudi but we’ll have to see what others suspect it to be.

 

[vetteguy53081]

Took a look at your pic on computer screen
Looks like red sea slug/California sea slug of the rostanga group

 

[elysics]

May be bubble algae covered in cyano

I dont think so, it wasn't really hollow shell, more like a lump of meat. Unless bubble algae becomes massive when it rots.

If it was alive yesterday when i put it into that container and made the picture, it's dead now, i didnt want to put it back into the tank not knowing what the clouds it kept releasing were.

It lost the fluorescence and is more of a uniform dark green now, when i poked it again it fell apart a bit, doesnt look like it was hollow at any point. And the water is very pink as i said.

As for a nudibranch, im not sure, it really was round all around except for that little protrusion. And i have not gotten new frags for weeks. And no fresh rocks for many months.

 

[Tumey]

I think @vetteguy53081 is on the right track. With some more searching myself I found this image online.

 

[elysics]

Mhm but where would the fluorescence come from? It wasnt just a little bit glowing either, it was very very bright neon orange, brighter than coralline that was exposed to air and is dying, but very similar. Might be bubble algae after all, does anyone know if bubble algae exhibits a similar reaction as corraline when exposed to air? And whether it is massive as opposed to hollow at some point in its lifecycle? Or maybe some other kind of algae.

The last frags i bought definitely didnt have big nudibranchs on them and the only orange thing in my tank that newly hatched babies could have eaten doesn't have any apparent damage.

And as i said, it was round all around, like a bean, there was no visible snail foot or any edges/fringes.

Or it isnt a single thing at all, but rather some weird concoction of different things maybe? Some amalgamation of bubble algae, coralline, purple cyano and green cyano?