Tiny black dots coming off chalice when dipping

jlieber516

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Hello Everyone,

I recently set up a frag system and am trying to be very thorough about quarantining everything I introduce. A few months ago I purchased a chalice coral that has now been in quarantine for 60 days. Overall the coral appears to be in good health and has even grown a bit; however, every time I dip the coral I notice a few black specks fall off. After the most recent dip I collected one of the black specks to observe under a microscope and after inspection, I haven’t the faintest idea as to what I am looking at. I was wondering if anyone may be familiar with what is circled in the image below?

4283E636-7935-4EDB-B5D2-1F637FE4EBFD.jpeg
 
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vetteguy53081

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Black specks are too small to be picked up by a cell phone camera- they are a bit larger than a grain of sand
Are they moving ? If not may be sand
 
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jlieber516

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Are they moving ? If not may be sand
Not moving. However, based off the microscope image it is green and appears to have a membrane or is at least gelatinous, so it’s not likely sand. If you look closely with the microscope (probably not going to see with the image I provided), you can see what almost look like organelles within the object. I think it is some type of organism- Completely perplexed as to what though
 

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