Aquarium Blow Job?

I'm home from work today with a fever, and was sitting near-to-coma staring into my reef aquarium when I noticed one of the snails (Astrea sp.) releasing gametes (ah, cumming)into the water. The snails look like they're on fire with a plume of white smoke coming out of them when they're, ah, releasing gametes.

What was particularly interesting was that one of the fish (Chromis viridis -- mostly boring but neon-green/blue and very active, schooling fishies) was hovering just off starboard of the snail inhaling the smoke stream of snail splooge. Clearly this is a fish that swallows.

The fish pictured here had nothing to do with the spunk inhaling today, although as the gametes spread out in the tank all inhabitants enjoyed the, er, tasty treat.

The fishies in the pic are commonly called Bengali Cardinals (Pterapogon kauderni). Big risk buying two as one hopes one gets a mated pair, otherwise same sex coupling leads to death and singledom. Dad carries the eggs in his mouth and when the fry hatch he spits them out into the cruel world, where, again, all my fish enjoy a live food treat. I've seen the male "pregnant" (mouth gets very very swollen) but never seen him "give birth." The young will never survive without the happy couple being moved to a pregnancy tank, and I ain't in the business of raising baby Bengalis!

My aquarium is back on the road to recovery. An unknown disease or unseen parasite wiped out most all my beautiful stoney corals (two brain corals, a sun coral and a soft coral called mushroom, survived). Water quality is not to blame as all fish, invertebrates (even sea squirts and sponges) have continued to do well. I also had an outbreak of an all but impossible to harvest by hand macro algae which covered the tank in what looked like wet, shaggy RED cotton batton. After a search and many tries with various "natural controls", five large pacific giant turbo snails (Turbo sp.) have all but eliminated the stuff in a couple of weeks.

Soon, I'll acquire a new stony coral and, well, test the waters.

Nemo says hello.