A cheating 'magic of nature' post.

I love writing posts about sea-based-critters.  There is something so exciting about that journey that goes from 'what the heck is that' all the way too 'omgosh, he eats wwhha...?!'.



However due to horrendous rain/hail/deadlines, I have been inhabiting a more indoor based habitat of late but I did get to make a small trip to (probably) the world's worst aquarium.

No joke, it consisted of four floors yet had less fish than a pet-shop!

Floor one - promising; five tanks filled with beasties.
Floor two - bemusing; 1 depressed lobster (clearly bought from an upper-class supermarket) and 2 shrimp.
Floor three - bizarre; a single table in the middle of the room filled with 'interesting' shells and stones that had clearly been found in a desperate afternoon of what the heck shall we put here?

And what was on the final floor - the grand finale of the aquarium - I hear you ask?



A beanbag and a TV.  Yup.  So it was pretty exciting as adventures go!  

But I did learn something very exciting - Clownfish (y'know - Nemo) are sequential hermaphrodites.  This means that the wee little clownfish develop into a male first, then as they mature they turn into females (who are much larger and more aggressive).  This happens when the female clownfish of the group dies, then the top-dog male clownfish becomes female and the rest of the male clownfish move up the ranks in their hierarchy.

How much does that change the film Finding Nemo - not long till Marlin becomes Marlena!

I know most of these pictures are blurry but the colours are just so beautiful I couldn't not post them.  Also look at the little dude in the last picture, there were tonnes of these Garden Eels who just popped up and disappeared again like a whack-a-rat game.  I was in love and I am now desperate for a tank-garden of garden eels.