“Flipping Snails,” Redux*

*I’m on a limited schedule this week, due to a nasty virus that’s trying to make me cough up a lung (or both…it doesn’t seem picky on that point). In light of which, here’s a post that originally ran in 2011, with some updates: February, 2011: An interesting side effect of owning an aquarium is that you end up running a “Life Alert” program for snails. Half the snails I own cannot right themselves when they fall off the glass and land upside down in the sand. (Trochus, in particular, have cone-shaped shells that spike into the substrate on impact, leaving the snail to

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Spotlight on Oscar the Abalone

My abalone has a first name, it’s O-S-C-A-R…. And here’s Oscar now:   He’s learned to come to the top of the tank when he’s hungry, because I clip his seaweed to the top of the tank, and he knows to find it there. He’s even smart enough to reach his snout above the top of the water, searching, if he can’t find food at the top of the water. (Which is smart, because seaweed floats, and sometimes he has to feel along the surface to find it.) He doesn’t see well, except for light and shadow, but he has an excellent sense

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Reef Retrospective: August 2014

August was an interesting month on my little reef. I created “algae cages” to grow red macro-algae (think “seaweed”) for my abalone, Oscar. Oscar would ordinarily eat the entire plant at once, but the cages protect the plants while allowing Oscar to nibble on the parts that grow through the mesh. I acquired a new species of sea fan: …and lost a fish. Sadly, Tai the dragonet leaped from the tank and I didn’t learn about it until too late. (Stay tuned for an update on his replacement.) Ghillie continued his habit of offering lovely poses to photograph, and Ceti continued hunting for

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