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For everyone...

Cindy

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Have a nice day!

Rampup:  They are not mine.  
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 They belong to the "Underwater World", a aquarium exhibit at Sentosa, our offshore island for R&R.

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A leafy sea dragon!
They are from where I am from, the south of Australia.

I used to see them sometimes when I dived around Albany right down on the south coast as well as dozens of the regular weedy sea dragons.

This is what they look like:

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Cheers, Troy

Just noticed there's a weedy behind the leafy in your aquarium Cindy!
 
To Frickin cool...
 
If you're ever in Baltimore check out the aquarium there....unbelievable collection of seahorses.
 
Wow! Beautiful pics guys!
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Does anyone know the status of the animals?

Are they endangered? I just ask because I don't think I have ever seen one in a private collection... I don't know much about them, but if memory serves, aren't their diets difficult to replicate or something?
 
I was going to have a tank just filled with them so I did a little research. Their numbers in the wild are severly declining, like CPs and sadly for the same reasons. Sea horses and dragons also do not do extremely well in captivity and if they are kept they should be alone due to their eating habits and needs. Due to there severly declining population, due to collection by sellers, I decided against my tank.
 
How about that! Very amazing looking little critter...never heard of them. It kinda looks like Mother Nature was really tired and fed up creating creatures ...and she had a few random parts of this and that, so she stuck them all together rather hastily and said "There! I'm done!"...and wiped her brow.
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What does a weedy sea dragon look like? Are there other ones? This needs investigating.

Momma Nature never ceases to amaze me.

Suzanne
 
OH! I was in Baltimore a few months back. It was dark in there and rather rude to use a flash (we got a special showing at nighttime) so they're blurry from using the nightlight:

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  • #10
I would strongly advise NOT getting them for your aquariums, I would be surprised if you could get them anyway?

They are notoriously sensitive and difficult to feed. Theyare also temperate water fish, not tropical, so you can forget corals and all the other pretty coloured angels, etc that go with a tropical tank. You would almost certainly have to have a tank set up specifically for them.

Both kinds are apparently endangered (isn't everything) but leafy's live in areas where it is extremely hard to see them and the weather is often awful so accurate counts would be difficult.

I used to be able to see 20 or 30 weedy's in a 45 minute dive so I am not sure they are so endangered.

Cheers, Troy.
 
  • #11
i used to keep marine aquariums. you cant keep these, sorry. the closest thing you can get is a seahorse. and that is a BIG responsibility aswell. and even if the seadragon was a tropical fish, you couldn't have coral with is anyway, besides a few soft ones like mushrooms or xenia (commonly in seahorse tanks) because seahorses and leafy sea dragons like SLOOW water and coral like its fast. plus it would be stung and killed by most coral.
 
  • #12
well let me be a little clear, I don't want one... never have, never will, just kinda want to see one in person... I wonder if Sea World of Texas has any.. .I might have to go spend a day there soon.
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Sadly, far to many reef fish are being collected by an unsavory method using cyanide. The collectors toss a molatave cocktail of sorts into the water and it stuns the fish. And then these severely traumatized creatures make their way through the supply chain, and most end up dying on the person who buys them, and everyone loses out. This is why it is important to make sure your supplyer uses only those collectors that go down and collect by hand.

The real attrocity, is it damages the area of the reef and those species that are not collected as well, the phillipines are severely devestated by this, and many of their reefs are completely destroyed.

Thankfully, many fish have entered cultivation, but there are some that it is just currently impossible to breed in captivity, because they go through a plantonic stage in their growth, and various other reasons... thankfully, many nations, including the phillipines (I think them any how) are taking a conservationist angle and have passed laws against cyanide collecting, and are training their fishermen to work in such a way as to preserve the reef as a renewable resource.

kinda cool... that hobby is turning around and becoming more ecologically concious.
 
  • #13
Wow! Those are great pictures! I was at the Long Beach Aquarium awhile back and they have an exhibit of leafy sea dragons and I was just mesmerized by them. They are so exotic and beautiful! Thanks for sharing!

cpwitch
 
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