Impulse Buys

Yesterday we went to Giordano's pizza for dinner. They have the best stuffed pizza I've ever tasted. Chicago is famous for its pizza and we're very proud of that distinction. When my wife and I were dating in college we were fortunate enough to have one close to her school in Oak Park. Now we're fortunate enough to have a LFS close to our favorite pizza place. So, we had to drop into Exotic Aquatics after dinner just to take a look around.

We ended up leaving with a Xenia coral fragment and a sand sifting starfish. The Xenia coral in the right conditions will pulse. This means it opens and closes its polyps to generate current across the colony. Mine isn't quite pulsing at this time. It waves and moves in a way that suggests there is something going on besides current causing the movement. It is really cool to watch.

As the title of this post suggests these were impulse buys. When I came home I found out that the starfish isn't recommended for reef tanks because it will eat everything in my live sand bed and turn it into a dead sandbed. Once that occurs the starfish will die of starvation and I'll be left with a sandbed devoid of life. Hmmm. Since this doesn't sound like a good thing I guess I'll have to take the starfish back. In the future I'll have to refrain from making anymore impulse buys. But what the hell, isn't life more interesting when it doesn't follow a script? Just my $0.02.