ID help

[fatoldsun]

Anyone have a guess what these might be? They look like eggs but at the moment I don’t have any pairs in my tank. The area above the pile has a RBTA that recently split. There is a large GSMC that hosts in the nem and she constantly wags her tail as if she’s nesting but like I said, she’s solo (there is a perc in the sump so it’s in the water column) There was also a fungi plate in that vicinity that I recently moved because the GSMC kept burying it in her sand storm redecorating efforts.
Here are the best shots I could get with the p&s…

 

[fatoldsun]

I guess I should add that they were gone (or buried) within an hour or two -- as expected. I wish I had time to get some out and put them under the microscope but I had a bit of a family emergency that came up literally as I took those pics - by the time I got back, they were all long gone

 

[mnat]

Could of been one of your inverts spawning.

 

[fatoldsun]

Any guess what type(s) of inverts spawn by laying/dropping eggs? I thought the coral(s) just branch and/or divide – anyway they're stationary the only thing that was near there was a fungi-plate that has died. I’ve read that they can spawn when they become overly stressed so that they can regenerate. My GSMC likes to play in the sand and buried it all the time – I finally moved it but it was too late it seems. They could have been under it.

Otherwise I think I’ve seen the urchin dropping something that looked similar but it was in the back of the tank when I saw it and I couldn’t see what, if anything, had accumulated underneath it because it was behind the rockwork.

I have one peppermint shrimp, one coral banded shrimp (new so it’s possible it came in carrying eggs but I doubt it given its size and the volume of these things – they’re be nothing left of the shrimp now) 1 emerald crab, the 1 urchin, 1 brittle star, 1 clam – so you see, not a lot of pairs in there. The only pairs would be snails and hermits. Snail eggs I thought are usually on the glass or rocks and look like a squiggly line or trail. I just sort of assumed the hermits would carry their eggs like larger crabs and other crustaceans do (thought this would include the shrimp too) so I had a similar thought but I seem to be ruling out every possibility – obviously I’m missing something or assuming incorrectly about some of the biology in there…. I guess if I stayed at a Holiday Inn Express last night I’d be a better Marine Biologist today

 

[Sandee]

Looks like urchin droppings to me. Mine do that a lot ...

 

[fatoldsun]

Looks like urchin droppings to me. Mine do that a lot ...

Well poop's hardly as exciting as eggs but they're both signs of life progressing normally so I'll take it...

 

[duijver]

Looks like urchin droppings to me. Mine do that a lot ...

+1 to Sandee. My Pin cushion urchin makes more of a mess than he helps. I had no HA until he/she/it was introduced, but it could be a total concidence.

 

[fatoldsun]

Well this thing deserves a union card or something. It's like a machine. Like the roomba for algae like the alg-a-bot or alga-not... (or knot for a more nautical spin) but it likes coralline and it plows through it. I'm not sure how I feel about that.