MARINE AQQARIA 



comfortable animals and plants are preferable to a larger number in sickly 

 or dying condition. 



In handling the animals, to place them into the aquarium, the anemones 

 and similar fauna should be introduced together with the shells and stones 

 to which they may adhere. All the other low forms should be handled 

 in a spoon; while fishes, crabs, etc., should be transferred with a shallow 

 net. None should be forcibly removed from any object to which they 

 are attached, as it is always injurious, very often fatal to them. After 

 they have been put into the aquarium, they should not be touched, and if 

 it is necessary to assure oneself that they are alive, a very small glass tube 

 will serve as a blowpipe and a breath of air will cause sufficient movement 

 to determine the question. 



A very little experience and observation will enable the fancier to 

 distinguish between a sick or dead inmate and a healthy and living one. 

 If the shape and position of the anemones have not changed, a clouded 

 appearance forms about the sponges, the bristles of the pipe worms remain 

 unchanged and motionless, the snails on one spot and enclosed in their 

 shells, the mussels, clams and oxygen in the same position with constantly 

 gaping valves and no appearance of water currents over them, the crabs 

 without movement of the eyes or antennae, and the fishes torpid and 

 motionless; these are all suspicious signs requiring investigation. 



Marine Scavengers. The scavengers of the marine aquarium are 

 gasteropods, shrimps and crabs, which are effectual when the amount of 

 food is properly regulated. 



AccLiMiTizATioN IN THE Marine Aquarium. Deaths are most 

 likely to occur when the animals are first introduced, as the changed con- 

 ditions during their transportation affect them even more than existence 

 in a properly arranged, well aerated aquarium; but after they have become 

 acclimated to their new surroundings, the deaths are not more numerous 

 than with the fauna of the freshwater aquarium. Trials with the marine 

 aquarium are earnestly advocated; they have a novelty and beauty all their 

 own, may be set up anywhere and maintained at no greater expense than 

 the keeping of the finely bred goldfishes. 



Collecting for the Marine Aquarium. In making collections 

 the periods of lowest water twice a month, at the new and full moon, give 

 the most satisfactory results, but especially at full moon in the months of 

 September and October and in March and April. A sandy beach may 

 not yield many specimens, but back-bays and thoroughfares, their 

 borders and outlets, are favorable localities. Cliflfs, rocks and boulder- 

 strewn beaches, or where tide-pools and depressions have formed, overflown 

 at high tide and above low-water when the tide recedes, are the best; and 



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