#eel grass

Eel Grass Garden

There, manatees are declining fast — nearly two thousand have died from starvation since 2020 along the Indian River Lagoon. Zoo Tampa has been rescuing as many starving manatees as they can hold, saving them from death and prepping them for re-release into the wild. Fortunately for the manatees ready to return to the wild, they have a safe destination: Crystal River. The strides made in that small community hold promise for a path forward for manatees across the state.

by David Wrobel

My true form

Cabaret started Fin biting TT~TT I know how it started, and I know it was my fault... He started about 6 nights ago, I did a water change and forgot to put the sponge I use to soften the flow back onto the filter outlet. When I first realized, he had taken off about half of his tail's length overnight. I fixed the flow problem and he seemed quite happy - his colours were vibrant, he was swimming through and around his plants and hide (I didn't do a scape update when I put that in...oops...), he was dashing around the open top and he was displaying his - albeit torn to oblivion in the tail - fins nice and wide. I thought "Yes, crisis averted!" ...I thought wrong it seems... Although not easily noticeable, his tail apears to be growing shorter each day... which is such a pitty because there was such nice blue in the regrowth (my camera and the lighting don't show it well, hence the 3rd photo) I don't know if it's paranoia or if it really is getting shorter though... will he stop, or is this going to become an addiction of his? "Less tail = more speed, can I go faster?" Sort of a thing... Sorry that I haven't updated in a while... and yes, I know, I have an algae problem in the moss and on the val and that his water is low today (the evaporation rate here is weird...I never noticed it be this bad at my old house) but what looks like dirty glass is the lid, just saying... Once I have rearranged my little flat, I'm getting given a bigger tank for my tetra shoal and Cabaret will be getting their old one (roughly 7 gal instead of roughly 3 gal) although, I'm contemplating setting both the new tank and the 7 gal up as [more properly] planted tanks while their future residents are still in their current tanks - the 2ft because Black Neon tetra look good with plants, and the 7gal because a) I like plants, b) fishnets here looks good with black and green, and c) I kinda want to establish a shrimp colony to deal with algea, but Glutton Butt here tries to eat anything that so much as drifts slightly as the water shifts (even the duckweed perished before it could take hold) and they'd need somewhere - lots of somewheres - to hide, alternatively I could get a few otos, but they still need somewhere to hide. Also, all my plants in this tank have babies already and I've only had them for 3 weeks (excluding the moss, that's like 2years old and been through both tanks, I've pulled enough from that to fill a bathtub probably...)

A skeleton shrimp in silhouette searches for sustenance with much zeal—if not mass—perched on a blade of Zostera eel grass.

6.26