Acan sperm release?

["Umm fish?"]

Hi all!

I wandered by the tank today in the middle of half a dozen other things and this caught my eye. What do you think?

The whole polyp:

Magnification:

Magnification, plus messing with the contrast:

It released this into the tank. It floated around for a while and I finally managed to catch it. I took a bunch of photos under the microscope, but I haven't had a chance to review them yet. I'll get back to you when I can....

Thanks!

 

[chrisstie]

Acans gone wild?

 

["Umm fish?"]

Mmm. Coral porn.

Some microscope shots:

First is at 10x:

Okay, so the gray-white on a gray background is not so hot. So I tried to find some way to get a contrast. So, what I tried was to take a picture and then shine the Nightsea light on the sample and then take the image again. So:

A particularly arresting Nightsea image:

After about two hours, most of the white stuff had broken down and a 10x looked like this:

Thanks!

 

["Umm fish?"]

Well, Eric Borneman thinks it's undigested food. So it's probably the prettiest poop I've ever seen. It's probably the longest I've ever stared at poop, for that matter.

Anyway, thanks for looking!

 

[chrisstie]

When you found out that it was more likely waste than.. the other kind of waste did you go, "Aw, crap!" ?

 

["Umm fish?"]

I often go "Oh, crap."

Heck, I figure if I document enough of my mistakes and screw-ups maybe I'll wind up learning something.