Ok. Sorry it's taken me this long to dig through my books, but I dug out my copy of "Pacific Seaweeds" by Louis Druehl and dig some reading about the seagrasses off the west coast.
The species he lists are
Zostera marina,
Z. japonica (eelgrasses) and
Phyllospadix scouleri,
P. serrulatus and
P. torreyi (surfgrasses). He lists distribution for both
Zostera and
Phyllospadix as being "Alaska to Mexico."
As I do google searches on
Zostera and read about it being found in England, off the east coast of North America, Greenland, Sweden, ....... I get the impression that these are temperate species. After a cursory search I didn't find any reference to this species being found in the Carribean or south Pacific. This suggests to me it's really not a suitable substitute for the commonly referenced "turtle grass" (
Thalassia sp.) for the hobby.
I haven't put any focus on
Phyllospadix yet but I'm betting I'm not going to find a lot of info that one could use to postulate how it'd do in our reef refugia.
Found this site in my google travels, check this out, a seagrass forum:
www.worldseagrass.org (has a great PDF listing seagrass species and their geographic regions).
I guess the stuff we want is
Thalassia still. It sort of irritates me now that I didn't buy a small piece from Tropicorium the last time I was in Detroit. Problem is, by the sounds of it you really need to know what you're doing with these grasses otherwise they tend to die real easily. So I had at the time passed on it, thinking that I needed to know more before I commited to trying any. Nuts.
Anyone have a good relationship with Dick Perrin? AFAIK he won't touch any Canadian orders. Anyone on the board from Sarnia? Care to make a weekend drive and pick up a plant and send it to me?? LOL j/k.
When I'm set up in my new place (moving in April) I might start up my quest for
Thalassia again but I guess until then I'd just be getting ahead of myself. But if anyone else cares to see if they can find some, please let us know what you find out!!!!