Page:The American Boy's Handy Book edition 1.djvu/89

This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
64
Spring.

or clams cannot be had. The clams and oysters should be chopped up very fine when used. Anemones and madrepores should be fed in quantities regulated by the size of the animals, and not more frequently than once a week. The food should be placed gently within their reach by means of a pair of forceps or some similar instrument. Crabs will soon learn to come out of their hiding-places at meal-times, and the fish will not be behind time in getting their share of chopped clam. If you have a vivarium (Figs. 51 and 52), a handful of fiddler-crabs may be kept upon your artificial beach, where they will soon make themselves at home and afford a constant source of amusement by their antics. I kept a lot of little "fiddlers" in a fish globe, and for more than a year they lived without salt water, happy and contented with a bit of damp sand to dig in and an occasional piece of chopped oyster to eat. It would be difficult to find odder or more easily satisfied pets than the grotesque little fiddlers. Each male crab has one large claw which for exercise or amusement he keeps in constant motion, only folding it up when preparing to enter his hole or scamper sideways across the sand. The pedunculated eyes of these little creatures stand up in a manner that gives them a very pert appearance.

Remove all dead animals or particles of food not devoured by the inmates, from the aquarium, to prevent the water from becoming tainted with poisonous gases emanating from the decaying animal matter. Dead vegetation, though not as injurious as dead animals, should nevertheless be removed, for it is unsightly, and makes the water turbid and muddy. No matter how foul sea-water may become, you must not waste it, for the injury is never permanent, and can soon be remedied by filtering or exposing it in earthenware vessels to the air and gently stirring it occasionally with a stick or piece of glass.

A filter may be made of a flower-pot, by stopping up the hole in the bottom with a perforated cork in which a small

This article is issued from Wikisource. The text is available under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 unless otherwise noted. Additional terms may apply for the media files.