JLW

I have a beautiful pair of Orange Spotted Prawn Gobies (Amb. guttata), that have actually spawned a few times for me in my reef. I originally purchased them with a tiger pistol shrimp, that they were living in the store with. It vanished, and I assumed it didn't survive acclimation. Well, today, I picked up another one. It walked to within 6" of their caves, and one of the Prawn Gobies rushed out, grabbed it about the midsection, and dragged it under the rocks. So. Did Bubba Clubba the shrimp over the head, drag her into the nest, and put her to work ... or is that a big shrimp eating grin on his face?

That's actually a fix it technique I use for pumps that have stopped working. Disconnect the return line, aim pump at face. Instantly starts working every time.

If it makes you feel any better, I've done this, too. Either when first putting the new line in and not paying enough attention, or when I've moved it up to clean around it, and then turned it back on before putting it back down. Of course... I've always been there when I did it, with enough time to use profanity, unplug, and fix. I do have a freshwater tank with some very, very large chocolate cichlids that like to play with the end of their return line. They've aimed it straight down, from one side to the other, but have never pointed it up. Yet.

Let me ask you this, if it was a frozen steak up in the freezer, and it got a little thawed and refroze, would you risk eating it? You know better than anyone here just how thawed it got, whether it completely melted or just a little bit, whether it melted or stayed cold, etc., and all of that matters. If it completely thawed and reached a warm temperature (unlikely in just seven hours, assuming it stayed in the well insulated freezer), it would be just fine. If, however -- like the 25 packs of frozen I just threw out -- it reached room temperature and sat there for a good long while, I'd toss it. Like I said, think of it as a steak. It sounds like it just kind of thawed a little bit, so I'd eat it. The steak, not the mysids. :-D

The job of a lot of anti parasitics is actually not to kill the parasites, but to force them out of the fish, which the prazi has done. Once they're out of the fish, they have a fairly difficult time getting back in -- and no chance if you remove them. Don't worry if the worms are still alive on the bottom of the tank . As long as they're out of the fish, it is an improvement.

I had my brain coral eat my Yasha goby that had been using it as a perch. It was regularly sitting in the brain coral, and I never thought anything of it. Then, it simply vanished, and the brain coral had this big goby-eating-grin on its face. . . .

Many years ago, I impulse bought a HUGE, bright green carpet anemone at a Petco. (Yea, yea... I know, there are at least seven things wrong with that sentence). I put it into my tank, and, within a few hours, had a really nice, open carpet anemone ... and about a half dozen domino damsels. Of course, the anemone died in about two weeks.

Ryan, you should get that checked out. Seriously. Worms in the toilet bowl is a bad thing.

Firefish are kind of weird: they basically get along, but also hate each other. They're aggressive toward each other in order to set up a definite pecking order, with one being an Alpha, and the remainder must Kneel Before Zod or else. In order to assert itself, the head firefish will be rather rough on subordinate individuals. The Beta individual will be nasty toward the Gamma and below, and so on. In an ideal situation, there are like 50 of these things to spread the aggression out. No one gets picked on so much that it loses fins -- or worse. When you have two or three or even four of them, there's not enough to diffuse the aggression, and everyone picks on the weaker members. This can result in death. This is even worse in the confines of the tank, where a subordinate individual doesn't have the option of running away or just plain getting out of town -- though, if the tank isn't covered, he might give it a shot anyhow. So, you have two choices. Buy 48 more, or get rid of one. :-D Unless you're able to remove one, the weaker individual will eventually be killed. As to which one to remove, given how hard they are to catch in a scaped tank... whichever one you catch first. You didn't say if your tank was a reef or not, but if it isn't, you COULD also just try adding more hiding places... might work. Maybe.