Thursday, December 29, 2011

Here comes the "stable"!

As you might have noticed, I haven’t updated my blog in a while but I hope everyone had (and is having) a happy holiday season. I'll start by letting everyone know that all my critters are doing well. Smokey and Sunny (my two crazy tabby cats!) seem to be content (in the mornings and late afternoon in particular) to just lie around and sleep. As usual, Sunny is very cuddly and wants to “snuggle” with me. Fiona has enjoyed running around out of her cage when I let her. The geckos are doing well although my leopard gecko (Seze) doesn’t stay on the warm side of the cage as much as I’d like (she needs to stay warm!). The aquariums are doing well but I witnessed an interesting event with my coral. My frogspawn coral decided to “bail out” of the skeleton. I’ve read that this is usually because either the coral is stressed (not likely with mine because it has been growing and the water is fine) or because they want to reproduce (the more likely with mine). My xenia coral has gone from being one stalk (when I got it) to fifteen stalks (now) in just a few months so it certainly seems “happy” in the tank.

You might be wondering what my title is about. Well... I’ve been reading a lot of information on seahorse keeping for the past few months and finally “took the plunge” with them. I haven’t gotten the seahorses themselves yet but should get them on Tuesday or Wednesday. The species I am getting are called Dwarf Seahorses (Hippocampus Zosterae). They are from the Gulf of Mexico (all over the gulf coast but many are around Florida). The tank is a tiny little two gallon aquarium setup with an air driven filter and a light. It has sand in the bottom, a dead birdsnest coral skeleton, a fake coral, some sort of “macro algae” that is plant like and a piece of “live rock”. I am planning on getting it to look like a seagrass bed (the home of h. zosterae) eventually. I’m getting a mated pair of seahorses so hopefully, I’ll have babies eventually. When I get them and get them established, I’ll post pictures on here so stay tuned!