Hi all,

Couple of other things.

In the 90's I became adept at keeping corals alive in captivity. Did it 50 hours a week for years. (Minimum wage too! I had my disabilty check, I was helping a good friend, and I loved the work!) Sadly, I developed one of those godawful, life-threatening, aquired allergies to the venoms and proteins of Cnidarians in general.

Three bad run-ins with carpet anemones and three severe reactions to envenomations by brain corals. Now I can't go to the beach after a big beaching of by-the-wind-sailors without getting tight chested and wheezing in the parking lot! (Is there a treatment for this? This really sucks for me.)

A big disappointment in my life. Sort of like one of you physicists developing a contact allergy to chalk dust. Or I guess "dry erase" dust nowadays.

BUT in biological systems solubility can be altered by "active transport" factors that don't occur otherwise. As living things we do violate the laws of thermo dynamics whenever possible. And vice-versa.

And forgive me, its been eight years since I've been near a coral tank, but either magnesium or manganese alter the solubilty of calcium. Both present in sea water. I forget in which direction though. Somewhere the phrase "magnesium poisoning", (with regard to the pertenant chemistry equations), keeps popping up and demanding attention from my forebrain but a quick wiki search didn't get me anything that jogged my memory properly.

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"The beauty of that discussion of averages is that you don't have to be an expert in Apollo or in photography in order to see where this time study "analysis" breaks down. You just have to be, well...not an idiot." -JayUtah