Cygnus – A retrospective

Given Cyg’s recent departure for “the place good seahorses go” (and his more temporal departure to the rose bed) it makes sense that this week’s tank post is a retrospective on Cygnus the Seahorse.

Cyg was not always the 9″ monster he became as an adult. In fact, when I first got him from the breeder (via overnight mail to the reef store) he was only a 2″ pipsqueak…

and a skinny one at that:

In fact, Cyg was the seahorse who taught me to put nylon mesh between the rocks on the reef, because seahorses have a way of getting stuck in odd places at inconvenient times. (Late for a meeting? Yep. Seahorse is stuck in the reef….)

He also had a thing for watching the corals. I’d heard about seahorses being “grabby” with coral specimens, but Cyg preferred artificial hitches to natural ones. He did like to “smell the flowers” though:

As an adult, he welcomed little Ceti and Ghillie to the tank, and had patience with them until his massive size no longer scared them silly:

As seahorses go, he was a good teacher, for Ceti and Ghillie but also for me. He was the first, but he definitely won’t be the last!