indiboi.com

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.

Yesterday I setup/moved the filtration from the 25 gallon over to the 75. Once I had that running, I tore out the plants and moved the fish. Agh, catfish are so difficult to catch! Actually, those little tetras are pretty horrible to catch too.

Mostly my planting style is “plop where it’ll fit” …I need to give the plants time to adapt and become more ‘true to form’ and all that fun stuff. There are some that are floating around, but I’m a bit tired of having my arms shoulder deep in water.

Leonard, the angelfish I bought a year ago when he was the size of my thumbnail, has been ludicrously aggressive towards Oliver (older, original Angelfish)& Samantha (blue gourami). So, for now, Leonard is in the 25 gallon with only spare plants as his company. He’s a large and by that measure a valuable fish… he’s also a total jerk.

That’s the “wet side” of the aquarium stand. On the left, the square filter is my Eheim Pro II 2028, it’s the primary filter. Its output is piped up through a Hydor Eth 300w inline heater and then out through a spray bar mounted on the left of the aquarium.

The little cylinder filter is my Eheim Ecco 2234 (?) anyway, it’s the middle line Ecco. Its input is a Fluval surface skimmer, output goes out through a 25 watt Current USA Gamma UV Sterilizer, then out to my DIY “Rex” style Reactor, just a couple of minor modifications. The reactor takes in CO2 through the 1st Tee, the second Tee is plugged, but that’ll be for auto dosing and top off.

I still need to more properly secure some of the hoses, and also elevate the electrical cords. I need to have a decent amount of slack in some of the tubing, due to having to burp the reactor, etc. I do have some stick on cord holders, but they’re not sturdy/big enough for the super heavy duty cords from the UV and CO2 Solenoid. My CO2 cylinder containment system is lacking, while it’ll keep it from falling over, I don’t really feel it is secure enough.

That’s part of the “dry side” of the stand. I decided to go with Coralife’s “Aqualight” power strip, it was considerably cheaper than buying half a dozen timers… and then still needing a power strip. I have it set right now to flip on the first row of lights while also turning on the CO2, and turning off the Lunar lights and UV Sterilizer. That means, of course, CO2 is off during the night, but the UV is on. I’m giving that way of doing things a trial run. An hour after the first row of lights comes on, then the second row flips on too. The process then reverses, with the second row of lights cutting off an hour before the rest. Again, I still need to secure all the wiring.

That’s an American DJ power center. Most of the outlets/switches are unused at the moment, but if I’d take the UV, CO2, etc, off the timers they’d be plugged in there. Right now it’s just the filters and heater. It’s so very convenient to be able to press a switch instead of having to unplug that stuff. In the future my dosing pump and auto top off system will also be plugged into this.

That’s Henry, about a year old now (since I’ve had him anyway). Here’s a photo of him from April last year.

I stopped at this small independent fish shop in Hagerstown Saturday. I’ve usually been disappointed whenever I went there, more often than not horrified by the tanks of sick and dying fish. The fish looked relatively good the other day though and they happened to have Sterba’s Cories for $3.98 each. This is a very, very good price for that particular fish, so I bought all three they had. Like any independent fish shop, they have a wretched guarantee, three days for store credit only. Okay, well, it’s better than nothing. One died pretty much right away, so I was able to get my credit for that one; today another died, beyond the warranty period. I suspect the third will die also, usually fish act like dominoes.

I wish it was poor water quality, but it isn’t… agh, buying fish at independent fish shops really does tend to be like throwing money away. Maybe I’ll be lucky and the third will live, but I doubt it.

I bought an Angelfish at Petsmart Tuesday night, it was dead by the time I woke Wednesday, heh. At least Petsmart provides a two week warranty on fish, which is pretty much the primary reason for buying fish there. Now, any fish that can be obtained at Walmart, that’s the best… 90 days of warranty on all the fish! Usually they’re pretty sickly, but if you get there on the day, or the day after they arrive to the store and quarantine like should be done for any fish, it’s a good deal. Interestingly enough, the Walmart fish have been the most healthy of any. The downside is, of course, the longer the guarantee, the more ordinary the fish.

My plant order from Singapore arrived Monday. Thankfully it was mostly intact/alive. The only definite casualties were the Ludwigia ‘cuba’ and the Stargrass. The Glosso still doesn’t look so great, but since some of it survived I’m sure it’ll be fine. They wouldn’t refund my money for them, due to how I chose the wrong shipping method. I still feel strongly that they misrepresent their policies and hide the details in small text on a relatively hard to find page. At least, if I were to order again, they’ll give me replacement plants. I’ve given them plenty of feedback, some parts of the website have already been changed, so hopefully no one else will be in this situation again. Unfortunately though, it’s something like $32 shipping minimum to get my two plants for free, so… for free it isn’t, really.

I’m increasingly concerned about my plant order at this point. The process of shipping is apparently considerably longer than the company makes it out to be. Apparently my plants arrived in the US to the transhipper, the delivery infonote from the USPS says that electronic whatever was received this morning at 1:30ish… dear god. I was expecting to get my plants yesterday, so the process is several days slower than I expected it to be. Not only is it that the plants have just now been re-shipped, but they were re-shipped from Washington state… they still have thousands of miles to go before I get them. I think this was a mistake, and you can believe I’m going to raise a big stink vigorously pursue a refund, due to this whole process being made out to be quicker than it is… if my plants are dead and mushy. Overnight shipping from the transhipper is worthless, really, because they’ve already been in transit forever. I really do hope they arrive safely, alive, because boring plants that are alive are better than exciting plants that are more like boiled spinach.

In keeping with a sensible way to start the 75 gallon running, I need more plants. I considered just driving down to Petsmart and getting some cheapie Ludwigia and Anacharis, etc, but ugh… I then considered going to That Pet Place and getting slightly more interesting plants, but eh… I finally decided just to order interesting plants. It turns out that most places are out of stock, heh. It’s either out of stock, they simply don’t sell the plants I want, or they charge ludicrous shipping, or they ship in uninsulated/unheated boxes, making the likelihood of receiving mushy black disgustingness pretty high, or the owner of the company is a jerk. I decided to just go to the source, Singapore.

So, the likelihood of receiving mush is still there, unfortunately, but I guess that’s just par for the course. I’m pretty paranoid about having problems with the shipping or customs or just the weather for that matter. Perhaps I’ve made a mistake in not getting overnight shipping, but I figured that one more day shouldn’t hurt, if they do ship as described it’ll arrive in this country to go through customs and reshipping to me all on the same day, then it’s just the shipping time to me, another day or two, right? I hope it works out, I did order a lot of plants.

I did, unintentionally, something horrible the other day. My semi-quarantine/reject fish tank crashed. I tell myself I could have avoided it if I looked for dead fish immediately upon noticing a little tiny bit of either fungus or bacterial fin erosion on the tetras. I’ve never actually had a single fish get sick in my care until now; though I have had a few just randomly die with no apparent cause. So, apparently one of the fish had died, I suppose of natural causes, spiked the ammonia extremely high, most all of the other fish became ill and died within a day or two. I did ‘ice’ two of them to put them out of misery, otherwise I lost a bloodfin tetra (I thought three were left, apparently only two… I’ll probably find a dried up one on the floor someday) and all five of the white skirts. I, coincidentally had moved Samantha the Gourami up to the 75 gallon, along with the three little Otocinclus a day or two earlier.

All that is left now in the reject aquarium is the Betta Max (hehe) and a solitary bloodfin tetra. The whole situation is a bit convenient, as I just didn’t know what to do with those reject fish. I had been considering putting them up on FreeCycle, sending them off to hopefully a good home. I do feel pretty bad about my negligence in correcting a water quality problem, if I’d immediately changed water when I saw the first sign of sickness, or perhaps looked harder for a dead fish, the outcome perhaps would have been different. I just didn’t realize or otherwise notice there were only four white skirts swimming around.

I’m doing my best to reduce the number of aquariums down to just the 75 gallon, which isn’t really possible. I still have two Bettas, I’d prefer to keep just Max and find the orange Clyde a new home. I plan on using the 25 gallon as a quarantine once I have moved the fish over to the 75, since my quarantine has a Betta in it that I’d rather not expose to possible sickness, obviously.

Leonard the Angelfish had been fighting with Oliver the Angelfish quite a bit, mostly due to the cramped nature of the 25 gallon, so I went ahead and moved him over to the 75, hopefully there won’t be too much of a territory problem in the future.

I also ordered three more pieces of driftwood, they arrived Friday. They’re smaller, but also the African Mopani wood. My goodness, that stuff is full of tannins! I boiled it for a while, but for now it’s just soaking. I do have a 100ml package of Purigen in the 2028, it seems to be collecting all the tannin from the bigger piece of driftwood already in there. That piece was too large to boil, so it just had about a week of hot water baths.

I’m still utterly stunned at the plant growth since I switched over to the EI methodology. I apparently was horribly underdosing… everything.