Recent events and an unfortunate turn in our tank

Things have been going mostly the same lately. I was glad to get my second tennis racket restrung last week and now I'll be able to keep playing whenever I break the strings on my main racket (they are old strings). I had forgotten how many string varities there are. Han and I have been playing tennis together more often lately. We still play with two other friends on weekends and gradually we seem to be drumming up more interest among our other friends in joining us.

Work has been going pretty well. I completed a major assignment a few weeks back and it was very well-received. I have lost my perception on what is "average" work and what is "excellent" work it seems. I felt my work was better than sufficient but it was deemed impressive by multiple individuals. For whatever reason, as a result of the compliments I feel like I should have worked harder instead of feeling satisfied that it was helpful to the Court. In future news, I have an assignment for the coming months that I predict will be divisive because it's a difficult issue of some importance. We'll see how it goes.

In an unfortunate turn of events, I recently learned that some of our coral are a potential health hazard. The problem corals are our two zoanthus polyp colonies, the green and purple things from the videos on the top rocks. I had done research on zoanthus (species)/Zoanthidae (genus) but never came across any information indicating they were dangerous. As it turns out, some specimen in the Zoanthidae genus (which includes palythoa, protopalythoa, and zoanthus species) contain a neurotoxin named palytoxin. Palytoxin is an incredibly complex molecule that is also, depending what source you read, either the first or second most toxic organicly-produced compound on Earth. It is fatal in humans at a dosage of less than 5 micrograms and fatal 50% of the time at a rate of less than 100 nanograms/kilogram. While it's only released defensively, such as when cutting zoanthus, I would never have bought something that has such properties if I had known about it. Zoanthidae are remarkably common and people all over the aquatic trade frag them (i.e. cut them). I can find almost no reports of serious injuries or deaths. And given that some major retailers don't even mention the risk (aka all of those I shop at do not mention the risk at all), I have to believe that the information I have so far is incomplete. Still, I'm not happy to learn this. It will very possibly lead to my carefully getting rid of the Zoanthidae we have. For more info of the chemical sort, go here: http://www.cbwinfo.com/Biological/Toxins/Palytoxin.html.

This is an unfortunate development; zoanthus are by far the most impressive coral in color variety that I've seen. But it's just not worth the risk.