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Salt
Water Aquarium Photos
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Jo
O'Keefe Copyright 2010. Photos may be used for educational purposes
only. Contact me with inquiries.
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Many visitors to the beach and to my website ask how to keep marine animals alive when they return to their homes. The first issue is "getting" salt water. I use a product called Instant Ocean from Pet Smart. It is like white salt. I dissolve a fourth cup of it in eight cups of water.
Keeping invertebrates such as crabs, snapping shrimp and whelks in salt water only addresses one issue. They need filtration to remove waste and to infuse oxygen. They need appropriate food. In the ocean they eat microscopic plankton found in sea water. You will not see a large mouth on a crab, anemone or sea star. The food a whelk eats must pass through its siphon. Even though I bring home a few cups of ocean water from every beach walk to add to my aquarium, some animals that I put into it die. I have not learned to keep them alive.
After photographing the animals, I return many of them to the ocean the following day.
