Help with Algae ID please?

Hi friends, I am having a hard time finding out what this algae is. A little help?

 

Not sure it is an algae. Looks like tiny stinging tentacles or nematocysts coming from each branch. If so, it could be colonial hydroids.

 

+1 I was thinking the same thing.

 

I just spent some time looking at colonial hydroids and I am not so sure. They are def. more plant like than animal like. Most of the pics I came across showed hydroids being more feather duster like or polyp like, almost like aiptasia. The ends of the branches are frayed out almost like a growing piece of caulerpa.

 

Looks like some kind of hydroids to me, too. There's an unbelievably huge variety of them and a huge variety of shapes and formations.

google image search on hydroids.

 

If they are hydroids how the heck to you get rid of them?

 

Does this pic help, it is another piece of random rock that has some macro algae and a few yellow paly's on it.

 

Bump for the new pic, please?

 

I pulled a rock out last night and ripped off a a lot of these. It seems that most hydroids I saw online will react a bit when touched or bothered, these did neither. They don't retract they just stay the same.

 

The whole thing wont react its the very fine stingy things that come out the tips, they will retract, but the rest of it wont move. The only way I know of getting rid of them is covering them with calk paste.