# Help - Very Urgent - Need to make sea water at home



## RobRemy

We don't have an aquarium and don't know anything about them, but we have a bit of a creature emergency (for lack of a better term). My family and I were at the beach today here in Florida. My 8-year-old daughter was collecting shells. She picked up a very neat looking one that is perfect, and put it in her bucket with some other ones. We just got home and dumped out the shells to look at them, and to our surprise, the owner of the shell is still living in it. It's very lively. It's a neat little conch with a beautiful shell. My daughter doesn't want it to die, but it's a very long drive back to the beach and we can't do it today. Can I use salt at home to make salt water for it, so that it will stay alive until next weekend when we can get back to the beach to release it? Do I need to use a special kind of salt? How much? Will fresh water kill it? What kind of environment does think kind of creature like? I assume it's similar to a snail.

My daughter is very upset at the thought that it might die because of something she did, so any advice about how to care for this thing is greatly appreciated. It must be fairly hearty, because it survived the hours in a hot bucket, and the hour drive home with only a little moisture. 

Thanks!


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## RobRemy

I saw on Wikipedia that sea water has a salinity of between 3.1% and 3.8%. I figured it would be better to err on the low side. I wanted to figure out how much salt to add to one cup of water, so I went to Google and typed in "3.2% of 1 cup in teaspoons." It told me 1.536 teaspoons. So, I measured out 1-1/2 teaspoons from a McCormick sea salt grinder (does not contain iodine), and added it to 1 cup of room-temperature Poland Spring bottled water. Stirred until dissolved, then put it into a Tupperware container with a bunch of other shells we found at the beach today. I placed the living conch on top of one of the shells that was sticking out of the water, and it slithered down so that it's just touching the water. 

Did I do the right thing to help this conch survive? Would it be better if I made the water solution using water from the pond in our back yard as opposed to the bottled water (I'm thinking minerals, or something)? 

Again, any advice appreciated. I'm trying hard to keep this little creature alive so that my daughter doesn't feel like she killed it. Thanks!


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## RobRemy

The creature didn't make it. Very unhappy 8-year-old girl. I've just attended a conch funeral, and I now have a conch grave complete with mini-tombstone in my back yard. Oh well. Sorry for the sad ending.


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## mielikki

Sorry no one could help you. I dabble mostly in freshwater, and was at a loss myself when I read your post. I hope this doesn't ruin the beach for your daughter...


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## RobRemy

Nah, you know how kids are. She'll have forgotten about it within a couple of weeks. I'm sure she'll be more careful from now on when she collects shells though. The only thing that can ruin the beach is the dreaded BP oil that's threatening the coastline in our area.


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## mielikki

I can hardly stand to look at those pictures, its horrifying. I cannot imagine what it must be like to live in your area, and the loss of sea life that is occuring. It makes me very sad....


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## RobRemy

What gets me is the obvious deception by BP. They keep talking about how they're capturing most of the oil, but there are three separate LIVE webcams that show a shocking amount of oil GUSHING into the water 24/7:

Live feeds from Skandi ROV1
Live feeds from Skandi ROV2
Live feeds from Enterprise ROV2

There used to be a single link to the live webcam on BP.com that they put there after Congress accused them of withholding the video. So they put it online, and all you had to do was click on it to see the live video stream of the oil leak. At exactly the time they announced the oil is now being captured, that one link turned into a page with 12 separate video links on it. If you start clicking through them in order, the first one you see shows clear water. It's not until you click past that one that you find the video streams with the oil gushing out. It's obvious that BP is trying hard to deceive the public. They are also buying Google and Yahoo search phrases, so that when people search for terms such as "oil spill" the first result that comes up is a page about what a wonderful job BP is doing with the capture and cleanup of the oil. In addition, they just spent $50 to $80 million on TV and radio advertisements, while denying many damage claims from people who have been affected by the spill.

The accident itself is a whole other story. They have a little known history of ignoring safety issues, and instead paying fines after an accident happens, because that costs them less. This interview with Scott West, a former top investigator at the EPA who lead a criminal investigation involving BP after a large oil spill in the Alaskan tundra, is very telling. Before charges could be brought against BP in that case, the investigation was shut down by someone high up in the former Bush administration. Instead of criminal charges, BP paid a small $20 million fine, which is literally pennies to a company of PB's size. Everyone should watch that video. There was another spill in Texas (resulting in deaths) that BP was responsible for, and they paid a small fine in that case as well. In both cases, senior management at BP was aware of a dangerous situation, and chose to ignore it because of the cost of repairing it.

I'm sorry for the long rant. It's really not like me to get so upset about something, but what BP is doing is so deeply wrong, and they're trying very hard to deceive the public. That burns me up!


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## mielikki

Rant away... I think that most of us who are paying attention have realized that BP is trying to save their butts, and come out in a positive light. EVEN if it means they lie to do so.
Great links, though... hadn't seen those yet


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## trouble93

Very insightful and thank you for posting this. As for the snail sorry your little girl had to go through that, but the best thing you could have done was to take it to your closes fish store with a saltwater department. I plan to come to Florida this weekend to spend a week to see first hand what's going on on the cost line and beaches down there. People don't realize the impact this is going to have on the sea life in your area. Out off of the Florida pan handle is the forth larges reef system in the world, and it not going to take much for it to all be lost for life. As it is now my Grand kid's kids won't see the gulf recover from this. Thanks again.


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## nina-zh

to make saltware you should keep water in a suitable salinity ,to keep suitable salinity ,I think you should consider to use a tool named salinity refractometer,it can test the salinity of water so that your marine live in a comfortable environment and away from illness....

best regards to your lovely daughter....

Contact detail: 
Tel:+852-66536346
MSN& Email:[email protected]


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## MediaHound

Sorry to hear about the conch... I can only imagine now for the rest of her life she will check every shell she finds, looking for an animal inside! 
And thanks for the insightful post about the bp oil spill, its a very sad and horrible thing that happened and the aftermath.


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## verdifer

Read This
More oil spilled in Nigeria "every year than has been lost in the Gulf of Mexico" - Boing Boing

Make the Oil Spill in the US look like nothing, not only is the Oil Spilling in Nigeria but the tribes there need to eat from the rivers which are black with oil.


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