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I recently bought a pair of GE 9325K lamps along with adapters so I could use them in my fixture. I’m just linking to the images because the current thumbnailing in Wordpress is totally retarded.

This is the before image that uses four Current USA dual daylight 6700/10,000K lamps.

This is the after image that uses two GE 9325K lamps and two Current USA dual daylight 6700/10,000K lamps.

That is an amazing difference, isn’t it?

Oh, and it appears my five little baby mollies have either been eaten or sucked into the filter. My money would be on eaten. The female molly still looks pregnant, if she ever does give birth I’ll move them out so as to help the babies a bit. I might even go so far as to protect the filter inlet. It seems I’ve gone to enough trouble with these mollies already, so perhaps if I get a couple babies the money I’ve wasted on the dead ones won’t be so bad.

It seems time was mostly what I needed to get the lead on the hair algae outbreak.

The whole situation came about due to my unintentional neglect of the system. I say unintentional because there were things I ought to have been doing that I just wasn’t aware of. The biggest problem I believe was that the intake tube of my primary filter was somewhat clogged up. I know to keep a better watch on that now. There are also some areas where detritus tends to build up. I’ll be periodically doing a manual water change so that I can siphon the debris, along with occasionally using the vacuum attachment on the diatom filter. That seems to work incredibly well, in fact I believe it was instrumental in helping gain the upper hand. It allows one to do an almost limitless “gravel vacuum” without having to actually change any water. The superior suction over gravity really helps too.

I started dosing Flourish Excel this past Sunday. I’ve been following the directions up until today, where I did a double dose of the standard daily amount. The algae that would have normally been green and sort of slimy on the dwarf sag in the front was brown, I noticed that today. It almost looks like I have a sudden outbreak of diatoms.

The addition of the two additional blue gouramis has also really helped, the driftwood is impeccably clean. They seem to have taught the angelfish how to eat hair algae, in addition to reminding the existing gourami that it’s okay to eat it.

There is still some hair algae around some plants, but it has diminished considerably. I’m hoping with some additional trimming and staying on a good maintenance schedule things should clear up completely.

The three black mollies that remain in quarantine are doing okay. I tossed in a “fungus clear tank buddy” the other day. The two males are fairly well healed, at least visibly, but the female needs a bit more time. I’m not sure that medication really helped, I think the addition of the “herbal” Melafix and Pimafix was actually more useful. The female at least has recovered from the popeye. I swear those fish are about the least healthy things I’ve ever seen. They’ll look okay for a couple days and then suddenly they’ll be on death’s door.

I do have at least five baby mollies now. It seems every day I find another. The remaining female is still visibly pregnant, I’m not quite sure what is happening there. I figure the babies are from the other females that didn’t make it.

This is a photo of the Aquarium on 22 January 2008

I’ve been working pretty steadily on getting my aquarium back to a state where I can be happy with it. A couple of months ago I slipped in my regime somehow, or rather in a few various ways, and it went to hell. I’ve had a battle with hair algae for a while now, but I finally seem to be winning a little bit.

It seems this part of the year is when I have most interest in my aquarium. It just so happens that this is also when it is time to replace the light bulbs. I couldn’t really tell a difference between the way overdue replacement of the 2 year old bulb and the 1 year old bulb, so I figured everything was still okay.

I received a single replacement bulb, to replace the 2 year old bulb, and yes there is a definite difference. I’ll definitely need to start a replacement schedule. I labeled the replacement bulb with “JAN 2008″ so I’ll at least know when it was put in the fixture.

It turns out that I found a source for straight pin to square pin converters on eBay, so for roughly $16 shipped I can finally use those glorious GE 9325K bulbs in my Orbit fixture. It would all be much easier if GE made those bulbs in square pin, but alas they only make them straight pin configuration. It’s silly that there are two configurations anyway. The adapters apparently do work, at least according to posts on The Planted Tank, so I’m pretty excited. I dinged myself a little on shipping, because I just received my DFS order today and made another order… but they do have the GE 9325K bulbs on sale, so in a way it’s okay. I picked up two of the GE bulbs and a little bit of fish food.

I figure I’ll have a row of those, then a row of the 10,000/6700K bulbs, so two of each kind. I think that will finally give me the look I’ve been wanting. It seems that with just the 10,000/6700K bulbs there is a bit too much green/blue and not enough emphasis on the red. My cardinals almost look like they’re blue and purple.

I’ve been using the Diatom filter with the gravel vacuum attachment to do major hair algae removal. It seems to work extremely well, only I did quickly realize why the supplied attachment has such a tiny opening. The regular gravel vacuum is large and not particularly meant to be attached to something with such incredible sucking force like the Diatom XL…

I sucked up my Betta, Max. He lived through the ordeal… only to die of infection a couple of days later. Initially I tried to euthanise him, but apparently didn’t use enough anesthetic, as he woke up after a few minutes. It was then that I figured I ought to give him a shot at life. I still feel pretty horrible about the whole thing, it was an accident, but it was due to my negligence.

I’ve been trying to purchase Black Mollies to help deal with the hair algae, but their propensity for Columnaris infection and my soft water doesn’t particularly bode well for them. I have three left, of the five, but that’s after replacing about half of them. They’re all still in quarantine, the female is about to burst as she’s full of babies. One of the females that died apparently did it while birthing, as I have two tiny baby Mollies in there now. I do kind of like them as a fish, the males are especially attractive with the long fins, but I don’t see them as a long term possibility due to the relatively incompatible water conditions.

I would like to add Amano Shrimp, but I’m quite sure my Angels would devour them as a very expensive snack. I have been considering selling my two Angelfish, especially as I cannot find any others locally to help disperse the aggression between them.

In addition to the new light bulb I received today I also received a 2L bottle of Flourish Excel, for which when administered above regular dosages is supposed to help kill the algae. I figure if I attack this from all angles I’ll have more success.

I have fine tuned my fertilization routine, which realistically was fine to begin with, all the fiddling I’ve done with it was only wasting time over the last couple of months. I have, though, finally setup and turned on my autodosing system using Grasslin timers and peristaltic pumps. I have one pump running to measure out the micros, another to measure out the macros, and then a third that pumps a light solution of GH builder (potassium, calcium, and magnesium) to flush each fertilizer dosage through into the aquarium. It helps prevent the micros and macros from mixing in the line, which would be problematic with the tendency to form iron phosphate.

I haven’t added the autodoser line to the CO2 reactor yet. When I set it up I added an extra plug for just that purpose, so one access port for the CO2 and another for either topoff or fertilizer (or both). The thing that held me back all this time was that the auto topoff was a bit of an eyesore with the sensor in the tank. It was also slightly prone to moving, thus would make the difference between filling the aquarium up perfectly or overflowing it. One gallon of water on the floor while testing it was enough to warp the subfloor, now whenever you enter the room it feels like the floor dips — due to there now being a gap between the laminate floor and the subfloor. I’ll eventually put the dosing inline, but there is no reason to rush it. There really isn’t enough evaporation to really be concerned with auto topoff anyway. It would be nice to have a reserve tank of some sort and a pump I can manually control to do topoff, but that’s more like laziness.

I’m hoping the autodosing and the stability it brings will help considerably, as it was the one thing, other than feeding, which was really variable with me. I don’t have a set daily routine, thus fertilization was never set at a specific time during the day.

I have added five Otos, two Rubberlip Plecos, two Blue Gouramis, and four Glolight Tetras to the stocking; some of which are still in quarantine. That seems like a lot of fish on paper, but it really isn’t. It’s extremely difficult to find Cardinals here, and the Neons are all tiny Angelfish food, so I doubt I’ll be increasing their numbers past the combined total of nine. The Glolights were only five in number, due to some deaths along the line, so I’m boosting them a little. I originally bought them when I ran out of local Neons.

It’s so difficult to find the fish that I like. I originally started out with the idea of having Cardinals, Angelfish, and Blue Rams. I’ve discovered that I really like Gouramis, and along those lines I’ve been thinking of adding some Cherry Barbs (particularly if they are adept at eating hair algae). I suppose slowly switching over to a more Asian versus Amazonian aquarium.

Hmm, well the other day I bought myself a hamster. Perhaps that’s another mid-life (heh) pet crisis moment. It’s not like I just randomly ran to the pet store to get the little guy, I did plan ahead, even ordered most everything for him online. It’s still a little random. I had given some thought to it, had this little “life is short, if you want one, get one… ” plus they have relatively short lives too, so it’s not exactly a huge commitment.

His name is Phineas. He’s what they call a ‘blackberry’ dwarf hamster, so really just a charcoal Campbell’s Dwarf Russian, with a cute black ‘racing stripe’ down his back. He’s so tiny, lol, a palm of your hand sort of pet.

Tonight I bought a little ball so he could run around in the kitchen. This also serves the purpose of allowing the ever-curious cat to inspect him without danger of Phineas becoming a snack. Even better yet, it’ll allow the also ever-curious niece to hold him without actually holding him. Gabbie (the ever-curious cat that we ‘rescued’ last year) wasn’t as interested in little Phineas as I expected, and actually appeared to become bored with him. It was still well worth the $4 for just those 15 minutes of playtime. :)

Unfortunately the Petsmart didn’t have any Angelfish really worth buying, all sort of the less than stellar ordinary ones. They did finally get a shipment, obviously, but either they’re dying in mass or that shipment was meager, or people are lining up to buy them when they open in the morning. Either way, another week, still no Angelfish. It’s pretty sad, really, I’ve been trying to get another Angelfish for about two months now.

Petsmart did have a shipment of Cardinals though, score. I found ten mixed in with some guppies, so I bought all ten. They actually had some other ones, but they were right next to the Neons, and well, the “jumbo” label is the biggest joke in all of fishkeeping. The little neons slide right through the dividers. Whomever labels those fish as “jumbo” really ought to come visit me… I’ll show ‘em what “jumbo” Neons (or Cardinals for that matter) look like. Perhaps I should refer to mine as “mega-gargantuan” or something similar? One of the little guys landed on the floor at the store, so I didn’t get him, poor guy, I think his brain liquefied on impact, or his swim bladder exploded, because he was being assigned his number, and it was next. I wasn’t really planning on buying $40 of fish, but… they’re pretty uncommon, and worth paying double for the 14 day guarantee.

The store (and these are the first fish I’ve bought there) has unbelievably hard water. I say that based on my TDS meter readings, didn’t actually test for GH or KH, so it could be other things, but still… The TDS in my 75g is around 200 or so, the quarantine tank has slightly less solids dissolved, but it’s still close enough to not get concerned about, about 170. The TDS reading on the water the fish were in was 10X the quarantine tank’s. I’m super glad that I have the TDS meter now, before it was more of just a toy. Though, it is interesting to note that my tap water is just 30ppm, makes me question the need of the RO/DI filter for topoff, etc, seems a bit silly now. Granted, there’s other ’stuff’ in the tap that I can’t test for.

Anyway, I dripped those little Cardinals for hours, with a drop of Prime whenever I’d dump the excess. It was getting to the point that I started to feel the process was taking too long to get within 10% of the tank, but I really doubt they’d survive going from 1700 ppm water down to 170ppm quickly. I did lose two of them during acclimation, hopefully the rest will be fine.

Oh, and my Zebra Finches, they’re going to be parents. I’m not thrilled with that realization, seeing a couple of jelly bean sized eggs in their nest, but it was pretty much inevitable. I should be discouraging them from nesting, but I gave them the nest and some Timothy Hay, and well, that’s what happens… eggs. The boy Society Finch has learned the song of the boy Zebra, it’s kind of hilarious, because I think the Society does it better.

Now that I have the 25g aquarium empty and removed from the office I’ll be able to finally finish laying down the floor that I started back in the fall. I’m not quite sure I’ll have the energy to do that soon though. It’s not so much putting the floor down, it’s more moving everything so I can actually do it.

I’m an uncle again, whee! Louise & Brother David’s boy, Gibson, arrived (was born, hatched, torn from the womb, etc) last week so I have a nephew now.

My nasty Angelfish Leonard squirted out eggs onto the aquarium glass this afternoon. That pretty much means he’s not a boy, doesn’t it? I don’t know what she was thinking, considering she’s been alone in the 25g for a while now. The eggs didn’t last long, those that didn’t fall off the glass were eaten.

I figured maybe Oliver would want to fertilize those eggs, but Leonarda was just as vicious as usual, so out Oliver went (again). When the lights went out I moved Leonarda over to the 75g. At this point if they want to kill each other, they can go right ahead. I’m not going to continue to keep them separated by running an aquarium just for Leonarda.

I bought a girl & boy pair of Zebra Finches the other day. Yes, that’s a totally out of the blue thing, isn’t it? I’ve been thinking about it for a very long time, just finally actually did it.

That’s Ben, he’s a bit heated up in that photo. He’d escaped from the cage and flew around the office for quite a while, while I was trying in vain to catch him.

That’s the cage before I moved it into the office.

Oh, and another totally random thing, that’s the Beetle stunt kite I bought that arrived the same day as the bird cage. I’ve yet to fly it, but I look forward to finally giving it a shot.

I also find myself really wanting a ‘Black Bear Hamster’ …I must be having some sort of mid-life pet crisis.