Some years ago, while taking a short story workshop class, I wrote a "Captain Sulu" fanfic, titled "Interview with Dr. Ambrose Crater, or 'The Salt Vampire Ate My Parents!'."
An absurd subtitle for a story that attempts to make some kind of sense out of the inherent "Doc Smith Level" absurdity of a biology that somehow metabolizes an inorganic ionic compound that is impossible (or nearly so) to tie up in a way that would effectively remove it from an environment.