Thanks. He was a cool little guy. He's definitely missed in the tank. He had been trying to host for about 2 weeks or so. In that time I didn't see any physically telling reaction from the leather. I did notice Clove polyps next to it irritated and not opened very much in that time. And the hermit crabs were making the Leather retract quite a bit. That day, my wife noticed the Clown seemed to be "sleeping" in the Leather. That was an oddity, as it is usually swimming just above the tentacles. About an hour later I noticed it swimming around like it was drunk and breathing rapidly, and swimming against the sand (not rubbing, more like plowing and not for long). Within an hour it was stiff and floating around motionless. There was no marking, no outward signs of disease and it was exhibiting natural behaviors up until that morning. For the last 2 weeks the leather coral went into 2 different shedding phases. Now 2 weeks later, it's polys are back out and it's bigger and more extended than before. I really don't want to equate this to toxins, as there are other reasons for acute onset sickness. I just keep coming back to how odd the Leather coral was acting. I do run Carbon, keep tabs on my parameters and do ICP tests every 3 months. Nothing has been wacky, and no other fish affected. The cloves that were near it rebounded the next day, and I changed my Carbon (I admit it was about a month old, in a reactor) that afternoon the Clownfish passed.
The effects I read about were from the linked study. While they used human blood to study the affect, Clownfish have hemoglobin, so it's safe to assume the same mechanisms at play.
I really can't rule out other factors such as infection, so I can't fully blame toxins from the coral. But the circumstances have me wondering.
