What's in a name?

I've nicknamed the snail of mine who has an egg sack on his shell "Spooge," but we decided he should have a proper name for when the egg sack has long since gone away. I settled on Winston for a first name, but needed to come up with a really great last name for him because I wanted him to have roman numerals on the end. At work we were discussing some naming options and were trying to think of what the British royal family's name is and realized they don't have one. The closest thing they have to a last name is "of Whales." So, after much balking at the british royal family I settled on a name for Spooge:

Winston "of Whales" Mountbatten-Windsor IV

Clean tank!

My snail tank was literally cloudy with snails and snail larva and I was getting a little grossed out, so today I rolled up my sleeves and went about cleaning my tank.

1. I removed the plant first and put it in a Tupperware container with some of the tank water.
   
2. Then I started picking the snails off the side of the tank and rocks and placing them in the container with the plant.
   
3. The baby snails are the hardest to pick up and move, so I'm more than certain that I lost several of them in the move.
   
4. After the snails and plants were out I drained the water and put the rocks into a different Tupperware container.
   
5. I cleaned out the tank with a sponge (no soap, no scratchy sponge) and then rinsed it several times.
   
6. I dried it off, including the inside so that I could wipe off any remaining attached debris or egg sacks.
7. Then I started running hot water into the container holding the rocks; I kept the water running hard and hot as I moved the rocks around inside the container with my hand. The water spilled over the side of the container carrying with it all kinds of disgusting things. I did this until the water ran clear.
8. I put a couple bottles of room temperature water into the tank.
   
9. I placed the plants back into the tank and then covered their roots with rocks.
10. I filled in the other areas with rocks and made them even.
11. Then I picked all of the snails out of the container and put them in their tank.
12. I filled the tank back up with water.

Now the snails are busy checking out the new terrain in fresh clean water. I think the big, older ones are pretty relieved to be rid of some of the egg sacks and larva; I know I am.

Boy, do I have a snog for you!

Those snails are crazy!

Now, what I am about to show you is something I've never seen before. On Friday I noticed something that I thought I was hallucinating; one of my largest snails is carrying the eggs of another snail. So apparently, one snail was knocked up then climbed on top of the biggest snail in the tank, and laid all his/her eggs on THE SHELL of the snail! I picked the snail out of the tank to get a good look, but the photo I took of him in the tank is much better quality. Enjoy Snoggers!