Its hard and about a 1/4 high and about 3/4 to an inch long. look at some of the other pics in my earlier posts.
this is the section of the article that lead me to believe its a foram test.
" They are large and obvious and are often exceptionally abundant. And, unlike the remainder of the forams discussed in this article, they are not found in the sediments. As they don't look like anything else in our systems, they are often misidentified as small sponges, hydrocorals or stony corals. These foraminiferans belong to a peculiar foram species called Homotrema rubrum and it has a shell that may be orange, but is more typically hot pink or bright cherry red. The red coloration is due to an iron salt that is incorporated into the skeleton. Found growing on hard surfaces such as rocks, the calcareous shell looks like a small hydrocoral or a hard, spiky crystal with angular projections. Homotrema seldom get larger than an eighth or quarter of an inch in height, but their brilliant color renders them very obvious. They feed on particulate material in the tank's water, probably mostly bacterial aggregates they catch in fine filamentous protoplasmic strands which extend from the tips of the angular projections. "
if it isn't a foram then do you have any suggestions as to what it can be? but I'm convinced it is since it matches with everything I've seen and felt.
Mike