Some of the best weirdos will come in with your chaeto or frags . . . Stomatella snails, micro-brittle stars, isopods and amphipods, pineapple sponges, spirorbid worms, vermetid snails - and a hundred other critters that fuel so many "What's on my rock?" threads here. Whenever I'm in a LFS, I've got my eyes open - especially when I'm looking at their older, grungier setups. A two-inch cucumber. A limpet. Tiny brittle stars. A sea-hare. You just never know what you'll spot! Sometimes it "came in with the liverock", but sometimes they'll sell it to you, and sometimes they'll just toss it in your bag. Can't hurt to ask.
Of course, you may find things you _didn't_ want coming aboard that way as well - red bugs, zoanthid-eating nudibranchs and flatworms come to mind . . . I like to look at my rock with a magnifying glass sometimes, and last night caught a swift but stealthy movement centered on a hole about half the size of a pinhead. As a 'pod would approach, something about an eighth of an inch long, slender and banded with two white and two black bands came surging (a tiny surge, to be sure!) from the hole in what appeared to be a predatory lunge. Without the magnifier, I never would have spotted it - or been surprised to see something so tiny move so much like a mantis shrimp . . . Each and every one of them has a lesson to teach your kids about the diversity of life, and about responsible stewardship - of a tank or a planet.
~Bruce
