Beast of burden

It's all about location; find a perfect site and settle in, and you can thrive. Hide off in a corner, and life's a struggle. The pink-tipped anemones in my aquarium know this, so they're always moving about, searching for the ideal spot, where the food is plenty and the diet varied.

This one seems to have the right idea. But the poor snail!

Heavy load

The snail, here browsing among the algae halfway up the wall, is one of the mud snails, Batillaria attramentaria, about half an inch long. And he's been completely encased in the base of the anemone, twice his size. And to add to his burden, the anemone has brought along its pet rock, and couple of pieces of clamshell; together the anemone's decor must weigh more than the snail.

And yet, the snail goes about his business, tranquilly scraping up the algae, moving on to the next patch; what doesn't kill you makes you stronger, he says, flexing his weight-lifting muscles.

(I've cleaned the algae off the glass in the photo, for visibility. It's still there, where the snail and his burdens are: those yellow-brown patches between the rock and the glass, for example.)