A splash of red

Picture 177,
originally uploaded by Hongyee.

The last of tonight's photo essay, the top right hand corner of the tank. From bottom left, colony of red Discosoma mushrooms, green hammer coral (Euphyllia ancora), brown hammer coral, and bottom right corner is a colony of button polyps (Palythoea sp.) which are kinda creepily neon green.

Oh, random point of interest. Palythoea toxica and P.tuberculosa are two of the most toxic corals ever known, so that palytoxin's LD50 is virtually impossible to quantify but has been approximated at 50-100ng/kg i.p. in mice, and by extrapolation, you need a mere 4mg of it to kill a human. In contrast, from my own preliminary studies in 2002 ("Clinical and Histopathological Studies of the Action of Agkistrodon halys venom on Experimental Envenomation in Mice"), Chinese viper (A.halys) venom has an LD50 of 100mg/kg i.p. in mice. Tentatively the most toxic organic substance known to man, and I'm glad I've got them in the tank. =D Right, being wierd about my toxins again. Nevermind. I'm really careful around this coral though, and don't handle it unncessarily and even then with prongs. Some poor guy had his dog die after it sniffed at (ate, more likely) a bucket of corals including some zoanthids.

The striking red bunch is the red Gracilaria algae, and just above that rose anemone #3 can just be seen. Brown stuff on the glass near the centre of the pic is a bunch of Xenia that has crept and attached on to the glass.