Mile's Island

Happy Sunday Kittens!


I was planning on blogging yesterday, however there was a quick but intense storm that knocked out power for 8 hours, but I will tell you more on that later. 


Every Saturday the pups and I (and usually my room-mate) pack up and head to one of my favorite little hiking spots and wander around for a few hours enjoying the great outdoors. On our last excursion I was talking with my room-mate about a flotilla of lilly pads on the Maquoketa River and then I realized it was actually plants and a rather large sand bar was exposed!


Being the sea monster I am at heart, Miles and I ran down as fast as our legs would carry us and we dubbed the sand bar "Mile's Island." As luck would have it, this week it was still there and I remembered my camera this time! 

We splashed around and Maddie was actually so happy she even attempted to play with Miles. Sadly likes was completely exhausted by that time, but never the less a good time was had by all! As I was wandering around looking at the tiny schools of minnows Miles was attempting to eat, I came upon the find of the century (well at least for me!) A fox jawbone, with all it's adorable little teeth still intact even! I just had to take a picture of it, as the night before I was on e-bay searching mounted animal skulls to put on the wall in my room once that project gets under way. 

After the pups had both had enough, they headed up the trail and of course we followed. The walk back to the car for the most part was extremely uneventful, until Miles saw another "dog". The dog was in fact a deer, and let  us get quite close until Miles unholy caterwauling was too much for it's poor ears' to stand and it bounded off into the trees.

At this point it is still all sunshine and fluffy white clouds, the drive home was fantastic, the pups slept the entire way, there was a cool breeze, and Rattle Trap (My ancient Subaru Forester) didn't even see fit to act up.  Upon walking in the front door, tornado warning sirens started blaring, well that is odd I though as the sun was still shining and all the clouds were just as fluffy and as white as they had been all morning. I texted my bestie and made a crack about the darkness coming and Silent Hill and then dismissed it as a weird test. Fast forward 15 minutes, 60 MPH wind gusts, black skies, sheets of pouring rain and thunder the actually made the pups cower (they usually could care less about thunder, fireworks, other loud booming noises), and then it happened.

The power went out. 

The power was out for 8 hours.

8 frakking hours. 

Now all over most of the city that made sense, trees were down and of course so were power lines, but next to our house 1 tiny branch had fallen and it was no where near a power line. While I was waiting for the power to come back on, I bought a couple monster high dolls to try to customize, bought a bag of rocks for the bottoms of the remodeled fish tanks, ate at Village Inn (which did have power), and arranged tanks and filled the newly caulked ones. 

All and all a decent day even if it was an inconvenience to not have power. Today was entirely devoted to moving fish to new tanks and moving the big tanks to the basement with the rest, however the is a post for tomorrow. For now I am going to drink a nice warm cup of decaf grog and get ready to snuggle into my bed.

NIght night Kittens!

Well your a fish monger... or well I am, actually.

I thought tonight I would post some pictures, although, they are horrible quality because my camera still hates me and my lights are too high above the tanks and make horrible refections because they are not focuses enough on just the tanks... HOWEVER, they say it is the thought that counts, so I am trying to count, or wait *laughs* or something.

Any way please keep in my there are 5000 things wrong with these images but I just thought I would try to show my fishes, because honestly the most people look at the post about my panda centric aquarium, which sadly still isn't a reality but it is getting closer to being a reality.

What you lookin' at fool? Prometheus in his normal cranky stance... er ,um, float.

Baby bushy nose plecos nomming some summer squash (which even after blanched still floats, thus the clamp)

King Diamond being inquisitive.

Albino bushy nose long fin baby... and a dried water drip, the water hear is liquid limestone :/

A couple ink in milk ladies and a dalmatian tuxedo investigating wearily.

More pleco babies nomming.

A flurry of activity, fish move far too much.

Monkey Face, hopefully the part of my foundation to my black velvet or monkey face platies.

A panda and a snow white girl floating about.

Cherry shrimp and MTS. 

Another cherry cleaning a moss ball.

Very dusty tank outside, bit a month old pleco baby on the left and a week old baby on the right. 

A blue and a pink ramshorn snail conversing over dinner maybe?

Male panda guppy (who I think I was swindled on, I am guessing he is a half black) ink in milk platies, snow white platies, and a couple tuxedo platies.

Actual in focus ink in milk platy!

2 snow white platies and a couple panda platies.

King diamond throwing his weight around... gosh he is fat. Ill be happy to get my betta only condo set up this fall!

Little monkey again being all adorable.

High fin red wag, bleeding heart, and wag bleeding heart platies eating algae wafers.

Fatty bleeding heart and a juvenile white tailed red calico platy again attacking algae wafers.

Assassin snails assassinating some earthworm sticks.

Prometheus generally being fat and lazy.

Zippy my only remaining yoyo loach checking out he camera from a safe distance.

"Who Me?"

High fin and bleeding heart and the wafers again.

Mama Kiara and a baby. 

Kingo swimming about.

Ink in milk, tuxedo, and panda platies.

Again I apologize for the horrible quality of these photos. Until I get a better camera and better aquarium lighting it is the best I can do.

Hope you all enjoyed them and any questions can be sent to my email as always.

Ick.

Or rather Ich, short for Ichthyophthirius multifiliis (also known as white spot disease); It’s a parasite that lives on the slime coat of fish and all fish keepers dread the appearance of those little white dots. Today while trying to take pictures of my new tanks I noticed my betta “Promeitius” had 3 white spots and I basically freaked, not only for his health but also for the health of all the other fish in that tank.  I treat ich as naturally as possible, I am not a believer of dosing up my fish with antibiotics or other medicines, so my usual coarse of action is cranking the temp in the tank to a balmy 86 degrees and adding aquarium salt. (ich can’t live in high water temperatures nor can the freshwater variety tolerate salt).  

Speaking of fish and fish related things, I will be closing my “Miss Ellyse’s Aquatics” blog and just posting the content here instead. I think snouts heart sprouts might be easier to remember for most people, even though most fish don’t have snouts.   So in the coming weeks there will far more fish and aquatics related posts then before.  If there are ever any topics you would like for me to blog about please don’t be shy. I love suggestions; they make my life a lot easier!!

What else is going on in my life currently? I am battling a horrible infection, so I am really weak and I am not being able to get done ever 1/16^th of what I should be getting accomplished however, I am going to dig through my storage unit to find my box of bags so I can have a few ebay auctions to try to raise enough money for that Epiphanie Clover Camera Purse I posted about in one of my previous posts. It seems silly being as I do not have enough money for the $800 dollar camera I plan on getting, HOWEVER, I will have a better paying job soon and I WILL have a new camera that I can manually focus.  I did manage to get my little point and shoot digital camera fixed, however trying to take photos of anything fast moving (ie fish, shrimp, cats, dogs) is not exactly a piece of cake. I manage to get it done, but for each picture that I manage to get in focus there are 25 that I do not, which believe me wastes a lot of my time (something I have hardly any of.) Focus and fast movement issues aside, my little camera is working pretty well again. It will work great for taking pictures of who knows what. Most likely food, as I have been stalking several blogs lately especially “Delighted Mama” which have tons of amazing alternative recipes which use natural and nontraditional sweeteners and healthful ingredients. This whole infection thing is getting me to try to take better care of my self again, which I sometimes forget about when I am running around like mad and trying to be super woman.

I look forward to feeling better so I can get some spring cleaning under way as well as planting my little garden and getting my outdoor fish tubs set up. I am glad I had been forcing myself to wait because the past 4 nights have been well below freezing again, which would have been detrimental to my little fishy friends. 

Vegetables and New Tanks!

I want vegetables, more over I want vegetarian sushi or fancy onigiri. I have a craving and I think I may have to make it a reality tomorrow. I need to go grocery shopping any way. I have all these vegetarian/ vegan food recipes I want to make up and try, but between my bad tooth and the severe lack of time I have accomplished absolutely nothing. I wish I had some one to just cook me delicious healthy food. Oh it would be so yummy. I think tomorrow morning before I have to work I will go get groceries and make up kale chips, cauliflower poppers, veggie sushi and beef stew... maybe some stir fry.  Can you all tell I'm hungry?

Speaking of sushi and fish, I have one of the new tanks all set up. I need to drag the other one in and get it and the stand set up some place so my other tank can spread out a bit, all the baby plecos, guppies and platies need growing space. I am still very excited to get my outdoor tubs  up and going, but I am trying to not jump the gun and I have made a promise to myself to wait until the first of May to take any one outside.  I will be selling off quite a few fish too hopefully before I move the perfect specimens out to the tubs. I am really excited about getting the spotty wags, snow whites, and black velvets to all breed true. Also very excited about baby plecos growing up and being happy and chubby. I need more holding tanks.

Other then that nothing is really new. I have a broken tooth that is killing me, the cats all have spring fever, I need to spring clean like crazy, need to sort through storage unit and try to sell some stuff on ebay and craigslist.  Also have to get the 3 bloggers I have reworked and all fancy. See ya all later!

The "heart" of the problem

I leave my heart on the farm every time I have to leave. I truly feel the most at home in the country and any time some one asks me if I had a million dollars and I could do anything, I always respond, "I would have a farm with a massive garden and lots of birds and fish... OH and lots of pumpkins!"

 Mama Mathusala kitty (actually her name is Madusa) and the magical Cour di Bou tomato. She is ancient for one of my moms farm cats at 9 years old. She is super sweet and loves to just be cuddled.  I wish I could take all the kitties at my Mom's inside, I usually end up trying to find all the kittens homes with varying degrees of success. 

 Mortimor, one of the latest kittens.

 Schnerd, Mort's little brother.

 I am told roasemary posted at your door means it's the home of a good woman, I put some by the door of my roommates house, but mine isn't flourishing as well as my moms, maybe I am not as "good" as she is yet. Practice makes perfect I guess.

 Possum the worlds most needy and ill behaved cat. She is a darlin', I really need to try to find her and her sister Ming an inside home.

 The harvest. The garden grew pretty well this year, although I think next year we will be using mostly grow bags and raised beds. It's just too hard otherwise, not to mention, I don't mind weeding but its so much easier if you don't have to as much.

Cappy is truly the happiest dog on the planet I think!

I really, really do want to have my own farm. I don't think it could ever be my full time career, but I would love to be able to grow most if not all of my own food and jack o lanterns, honestly I don't think one can ever have too many pumpkins or  too many turkeys.  I will keep working toward my goal. I just need to find the perfect catalyst to get me there. Dog grooming? Cat toys? Canine psychology?