pink and purple apple snails

pink and purple apple snails, originally uploaded by creativeaquarist.

It's 4 am and what am I doing? Checking out my fish tanks and looking at all the new babies and the fish that only come out at night or very early in the morning...lol.

The snails are most active at night and I've been watching them trucking around busy as beavers cleaning up all the leftover food. I know a lot of people don't like snails in their tanks...but I do. They are the most efficient little tireless soldier workers going everywhere in the tank cleaning up anything leftover. I never have any rotted or messy food crap in any of my tanks thanks to these guys and a few of their buddies like the red ramshorn snails I've started breeding and the Japanese trap door snails.

I did make myself go back and work on week # 8 of my Julia Cameron project and I wrote all my affirmations both yesterday and today. I also posted 2 new auctions up on Aquabid under mixed lots and tomorrow I have to mail out the 3 auctions that sold. So cool to be doing something I really love and to be able to do it right out of my own house is just the best experience in the world.

I see more than enough people at the flea market and I'm not in any danger yet of becoming a hermit, particularly with my son in the house and his buddy's coming over a lot.

I was on facebook earlier and somebody had posted a pic and an R.I.P. of their pet cat. It really made me think of how much we care for our pets and no matter how poor the house there is usually still some kind of pet there also be it a scrawny cat or a slinky dog that is beloved by the people that live there.

Animals contribute so much to us...unconditional love...loyalty...and they would gladly give their lives to protect us from losing ours. In addition to all the fish I have...I have a little Papillion dog named Lucy who thinks she's a pit bull....a massive pit-bullmastif mix...and a beautiful black cat that adopted us. Her name is Jasmine and she loves to drink out of the open fish tanks but never bothers the fish...other than to sit and stare at the tanks with me in the middle of the night. I think she's as fascinated with them as I am...or she's wondering when I'm going to come to my senses and start giving them to her as treats...lol.