I can't go into the weekend with this thread on a down note, so I'll try to focus on the positives. I still can't figure out why that fish died, but I did learn a lot about quarantine tanks and I feel like I have a good one for my next fish. There are tons of spaghetti worms on my rock and substrate, and sponges are starting to grow on my LR. I've also seen several mollusks (bivalves) on and behind my aquascape. Aside from the toxicity from FWE treatment, my invertebrates are doing quite well. I'm also encouraged that I am able to not only keep corals alive (even SPS) but I have also demonstrated their growth in my system. I guess I must be doing SOMETHING right. And I thought corals were harder to care for than fish?
For all you Monty Python fans out there, "And now, here's something completely different."
Remember this zoo rock?
I had been wondering what the larger zoo-like things were and it was suggested that they were Palythoa, but after doing some research I believe that they are Protopalythoa. They had been growing and spreading at an alarming rate and crowding out the more desirable green zoos, so I decided to take action. Last weekend I removed this rock from my tank and in a separate container filled with tank water, I extracted them individually with a hemostat, then scraped the rock with a razor blade. I was never happy with the large size of this rock since it took up a lot of real estate, so I then broke it with a hammer into 4 different pieces. Admittedly a few of the green zoos were sacrificed in the process, but I now have several smaller zoo rocks with almost no protopalythoa (a few got past me) that I can disperse throughout my tank. A bonus was that during the "dissection" of this rock, one of my missing orange Ricordea florida polyps showed up, hidden beneath the zoos. It was completely retracted and shrivelled but alive nonetheless. I placed this small polyp on one of the fragmented zoo rocks, and enclosed this in a mesh bag which I placed in my sump. It's been 6 days since I did this and I think one evening next week I'll take it out of the bag to ensure that the ricordea frag had adhered. If so I'll relocate this to my tank.