haircut

Hair grass cut, that is. Hair grass is the short species on the far right. The tank divides a room. This is the back of the tank, not the front.

I killed a thousand snails yesterday and all that remain are remnant escapees. I'm leaving the glass dirty to induce the remaining snails to go there to be siphoned off into the ter-let bowl where they abide obliviously for a few minutes until a tablespoon of bleach does them all in before being flushed. Or else smashed right there in the thank against the glass. Their broken bits attractive to survivors. It is a Thanksgiving season massacre!

I'm tired of these plants. The design is unimaginative. Now that I read seven books on potted terrace plants and garden design I realize it needs a few clusters of broad leave species and more variation generally. There are thousands of plants to choose from, possibly hundreds. Okay fine! Scores of plants to choose from. And we owe it all to Takashi Amano's own curiosity to thank for all these aquatic plants made available.

One of the angelfish died. 

They are a disappointment. I had no idea they would grow this fancy. I did not want that. I didn't even know their type existed. They were displayed as ordinary angelfish. Their fins are ridiculously long, extended by breeding as some goldfish are bred to extremes and some betta Siamese fighting fish too. The practice of breeding for fin length beyond anything remotely natural to extremes of evolutionary effrontery strikes me as an uniquely Asian propensity, but I could be wrong. The angelfish's fins grow fin upon fin so they curl as fingernails do as some human females allow, as obsessives do, so that they self-identify as psychologically disturbed in some way expressed as inability to groom oneself properly. Interviews reveal they are stuck, and among the first questions asked inevitably is, "How do you wipe your own butt?"

Long nails give me the creeps.

Long excessively groomed nails give me double triple quadruple creeps.  

These angelfish are like that. They can still swim, but it exhausts them. They prefer to stick their face in plant clusters and sit there all day allowing the plants to hold them up. Their stabilizing side fins are curled around in multiples, virtually useless as two flagging dish rags. They are lousy feeders. I expected an angelfish to go after its food like a dart, but not these. They bobble around gulping air to draw floating flakes into their mouth as if blind.

Having said all that, they are among the most interesting fish that I've owned. 

moss balls, algae balls

Unusual spheres of moss collect on Sydney beach.

Dailymail

Many more photos at the link.

Beach-goers said they had not seen the likes of it, why, it is like an alien invasion. They described them as alien eggs and alien hairballs and unidentified floating objects.

Scarlett de Villers walks the beach every day,

It was a windy day with a very high tide. I picked one up and squeezed it and it was so squishy - but I wasn't sure if it was alive and was worried I might hurt anything inside!' she told the Daily Mail. 'It struck me how perfectly shaped they all were and how green and alive they looked.

Alistair Poore, Associate Professor School of Biological, Earth and Environmental Sciences at the University of NSW says it is probably a rare type of living green algae that has been seen in only a handful of times around the world.

University of New South Wales, I suppose, on account of this being Australian but for a minute there it looked not safe for work.

Then the associate professor delivers my favorite quote, says Alistair,

I’ve seen similar things - sometimes dead sea grass can roll around and form balls like underwater tumbleweeds but that’s made of dead material and these look to be living,' he told The Manly Daily.  

'It is a habit known as "aegagropilious", where the algae is free living (not on rocks) and forms into spherical balls.

The Mail article contains a box that explains the questions the article raises, beginning.

The balls are thought to be an extremely rare species of filamentous green algae.

The explanation in the box ends with as much uncertainty as certainty.

It's unknown why the algae forms into balls. One hypothesis is that a ball-shape helps protect the algae from hungry fish, another that it may help them roll back into the water and avoid drying out when they wash ashore. 

Breathless.

The whole thing is breathless invasion of the rare ocean moss balls. It explains nothing clearly and its added explanation explains nothing except moss balls are known.

If this were an article in Smithsonian then readers would respond with precise knowledge and experience that advances the discussion with intimate insight, but this is the Mail. What do the Mail's reader say in comments?

• Okay now I'm going to have nightmares about green balls. 

• Just wait till they start to hatch. 

• They are Obama's balls. He lost them 6 years ago. 

• Seems to me that the first thing scientist would do is collect them, quarantine them, then slice one open and find out what's in them! 

• We wrecked the planet..why not give someone else a chance. 

• GET OUT A DAM MICROSCOPE AND LOOK AT IT.. DUMBAZZ! 

• Here is a unique outlook on this dilemma...WHY DOESNT A SCIENTIST STUDY IT UNDER A MICROSCOPE?

I know what these are. I owned similar moss balls before. The freshwater version. Put me off the idea of introducing moss and algae forms into the tank altogether. This and another Thai species turned out to be quite impossibly invasive. I wanted to do things with the tank. The Thai moss still is a serious problem. The ball moss was okay for awhile, from a designer tank point of view, but that's it. Now that I'm thinking about it, another species was worse. It came with the Thai moss and it formed a wire-thin chain of interlinked segments and grew impressively. If a link broke it grew two new ones. Like kudzu, it grew visibly everyday. I could get rid of great masses of of interlinked lacy chain link plants but it would be impossible to track down and destroy the very last filament-link. But I did.

These balls are common in the world of aquarium plants. Although not a plant particularly useful in the Takashi Amano style of natural underwater landscaping it was nonetheless part of the whole plant explosion that Amano facilitated. Designers are interested in species that oxidate with visible bubbles in response to intense lighting.

[aquarium plants moss balls]

Ebay.

99¢

Liveaquaria.com

$5.99

overview 

The Moss Ball is a spongy velvet-like green algae ball that in the wild is found around Japan and Northern Europe. They were once thought to be extremely slow growing, but recent studies suggest that the growth can be accelerated by providing more nutrients. In its natural habitat, they are moved around by undercurrents and sink or rise in order to receive plenty of light to carry out photosynthesis. 

The Moss Ball requires moderate to high lighting, approximately 3 watts per gallon provided by full spectrum (5000-7000K) bulbs. The temperature of the water should be between 72°-82°F, with an alkalinity of 3-8 dKH and a neutral pH. 

The Moss Ball propagates by division. It starts with a division line which progresses to the splitting off of a smaller new Moss Ball.

Aquariumplants.com

Cladophora aegagropila is an aquatic moss that is slowly formed into a ball over a long period of time.  Originating in very cold rivers and lakes throughout Northern Europe and Japan these Marimo Balls or Moss Balls as they are more commonly take long periods of time to form.  Cladophora aegagropila will not cause algae to form in your tank.  In fact, Marimo Balls will do the opposite by taking nutrients out of the water.  Moss Balls are a different type of algae than those that normally form in an aquarium and are very slow growing.  Cladophora aegagropila comes in a range of sizes with the small size in the 3-4 cm range and the XL size in the 10 cm range.   Marimo Balls are very easy to decorate with and use for aquascaping. 

4 per order, $16.49