The mystery snails being rested in a separate container
Big blue and Little red, our 2 new comets
Little worms have been pestering the mystery snails so badly that some of them have died. So action was needed.
One plan to get rid of the worms was to buy a fish or 2. Hence Little red and Big blue. They are common gold fish (comets), but a little bit more decorative. We’re not sure if they’re eating the worms, but they spit out the baby snails who don’t seem to mind nearly being eaten. There really are too many baby snails though, so it would be handy if they were on the fish’s menu.
For the moment, the big snails are in a separate container that I am monitoring carefully. It’s a bit milky because there is no filtering going on. We have a pump in there though and because the water is being stirred up, and there is a sea shell in there, the water acidity is staying neutral. I’m changing half the water every day, and keeping it warm with hot water bottles leaning against the outside. The heating should not have been necessary except we have a sudden cold change in the weather.
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Our aquarium is for snails. Now that we have eliminated all the nasty worms the snails are looking a lot happier! We’ve a variety of native snails, and we have apple snails. One apple snail is called Zoro because he had a big slash mark on his shell when we got him. The other is called Arnold because he liked to lift things, especially giant pieces of old wood. He doesn’t any more, but when he was new he often buried himself under a big piece of wood in the gravel. He might have done that to try to keep the worms off him, we have no idea. And we have lots of smaller apple snails that hatched from eggs that really should have been infertile because we only had the one snail at the time she laid them. And she had been alone for a few months.
Apple snails are so graceful. Absolutely beautiful to watch slide up the glass, through the plants and glide back down to the bottom. Great to see them happy and relaxed, laughing and chatting with each other, not a care in the world 🙂
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We spent all day today cleaning out our aquarium! Bloodworms were starting to take over. We don’t know how they got in there, maybe in the roots of bought plants. I’m guessing they are food for tropical fish, but if you don’t have fish they multiply! Here is a photo I took a few weeks ago of one of them on a piece of wood in the aquarium. The other photo is one I took today, it is the bottom of a big saucepan with about 50 of them. We washed everything, especially the gravel, and found this many lurking in among the stones. Obviously these worms are flesh eaters, but we aren’t sure that they actually kill snails, but some of the snails have died lately and there is no other explanation. I just hope we got them all, or we will have to start looking for a fish that eats worms and not snails … a question for Quora.com I guess.
Bloodworm in the aquarium a few weeks ago
All the bloodworms after cleaning out the aquarium
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I was really very fond of this collection of stuff. It has taken many years to get as good as this. Because there was no where else in the house that was suitable, it was with great difficulty that we decided this was the only possible spot to put our new snail pond!
So this is what is on top of our refrigerator now. It’s like a glowing 3-D television set, but much more interesting!
To decorate the pond is a rock of red jasper from the Gwydir River, a fossil leaf from the hill behind our house, and an antique silkworm chrysalis jade carving from Xi’an in China.
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May I introduce Jon’s and my first pet in many years, an apple snail named Xiao Luo.
(The music is “Dance of the Yao People” composed by Peng Xiuwen)
“If I love you, I have to make you conscious of the things that you don’t see.” The powerful quote written by novelist and social critic James Baldwin was the perfect opening for the “Ensuring Climate Equity” panel at Climate Reality’s latest Leadership Corps training in Los Angeles in August, 2018. Moderated by Catherine Coleman […]
Rivers SOS has made a submission on Centennial Coal’s proposed expansion of the Springvale Colliery. Here’s an extract: Rivers SOS has held a regional meeting at Lithgow, where we viewed some of the swamps desiccated by Centennial Coal’s operations, and … Continue reading →
Pond progress
Aerobic composting of shredded garden waste. 
felling a dead banksia
Post with no name, or maybe dumb spider!
表弟的农场 - biǎodi de nóngchǎng - cousin's farm
Male feeding the female
Carrcassone
sleeping frog
Aerial spraying from a helicopter.
last lock near Lattes
Yellow Mountain
This is where we live
day 1 - London
Can you guess what I'm doing?
Condom on the Baise River, France.
Shirley Peters
Sample of our work
Valence sur Baise, France