Pea puffers are so cute! I wish I had doscovered them before populating my 20g fresh with other fish. I do want to eventually have a tank with them. We have a 21g salt water AIO that's being decomissioned (moved it to a 120) that I might explore converting to fresh water.
I totally get the crunchy pop gushers. We had bladder snails in one tank amd when I was showing my wife how easy they were to squish if we wanted to do manual removal...it burst right into her mouth. She wasn't happy.
The clown loach we hired to take care of the snails did a great job, but, sadly, then wouldn't eat anything else and starved itself.
I've thought about getting one for the malaysian trumpet snails in my other tank but would hate to see another one go the same way. Although, those trumpet snails would feed them for a long while; feeding time turns the substrate into a crawling writhing mass of spiral shells. They do keep the bottom of the tank clean!
My aquarium snails are awesome, salt and freshwater...so many cool little cleaners. Wild caught snails can have parasites but as long as you wash your hands, don't lick or kiss, and keep it out of your mouth you should be ok.
I hope we can all agree that people should not be furloughed or working without pay during this shutdown but something I haven't seen reported on is the effect this will have on economies locally and nationally.
Napkin math so someone correct me if needed:
4.5 million furloughed or working without pay.
Average salary I found was $68,000 but let's use 50,000 to account for the top paying jobs probably still getting paid.
That gives us $4,166 monthly.
For each month of shutdown that comes to $18,747,000,000 that isn't being spent
While I'm sure most of us Americans could do with less consumption, I can't help but wonder how many small businesses are going to suffer from this. This is especially true for areas with large amounts of federal employment.
We usually have several groups of families in our neighborhood. Our streets were packed this year, though. First Halloween in a while that wasn't cold or raining or both.
Our neighborhood only has two entrance streets with a lot of connecting interior streets and cul de sacs which makes it a wee safer due to no through streets and less traffic.
Many families set up firepits in their driveways to hand out candy, sometimes with music playing or movies projected on garage doors, one house has a popcorn machine every year. This year several houses had buckets of mini shots for parents and a lot of others smelled like some dank vape. When we drank we used to bring a wagon with wine and cups to share with neighbors. It's a really great time.
This year there was even an Inflatable Cupcake Castle of Doom.
Last year there was a haunted house set up so that at the end you were watching the next group on cameras and you controlled the puppets and stuff, very Jigsaw style. That house has always had an elaborate haunted house but couldn't do it this year.
So...yeah, trick or treating is still alive in our neighborhood.
In my experience with people who claim the title 'artist' it seems a fair amount of them are arrogant and some border or were full on narcissists. This is not to be confused with artists I have known. I am addressing specifically those who go about claiming 'artist' as an identity and wielding it like a club as if calling themselves that qualifies them to be a general pest to be around.
I can understand the prevalence of these traits in 'artists' because it does take some extreme self confidence or arrogance to believe you have a unique vision that can change the world through your chosen medium. So maybe there is something to that. Frustrated that their self perceived genius is unrecognized and their talent unappreciated and not bring able to persuade others to their vision, they turn to forcing their viewpoint on others.
I forgot to ask is the bichir was with the pea puffers?