Orange sponge with a root? Another wierd critter

[moose2823]

I originally posted this to the beginners forum, but I guess this is a better place for an ID request.

 

I got a strange looking frag of clove polyp at my lfs a few weeks ago. It mainly consisted of an old coral skeleton but also had this strange orange thing partially dangling off of it, which had an attached tan appendage. The clove polyps were growing over both the skeleton and partially on the orange thing. Because of the inconvenient shape of the frag (one part was very loosely connected to the other via the aforementioned thing with clove polyps on both sides) and because i assumed it was just some piece of dead trash, i cut it in half and "planted" the two frags in different areas of the tank. The cloves are doing fine, but it seems as if the orange blob is starting to griw as well, which is why i want to know what it is. On the "root/appendage" side, which has some of the orange on it too, the "root" has grown "rootlets" and the bottom portion has grabbed on to a chunk of reef sand. On the other side (orange blob only) the blob has increased in size a bit. Mind you, its still all very small, hence the crappy zoomed in iphone photos. Any ideas what this is/could be? A sponge? Sea fan? Macroalgae? My head playing tricks on me?

thanks in advance!!