As is evident from my posting activity, this blog has gone to sleep. I am not sure what to do with it from this point forward. However, there still seems to be a surprising number of hits, so I am not going to delete it.

Having said that, my ISP is changing the personal hosting arrangements and consequently this blog has moved to where you are reading it now from here. Apparently the original pages will eventually be inaccessible, possibly as early as Feb. 28, 2005. Hopefully, this cross-link will get the new pages into Google's indexing before that happens. If you have any permalinks that you would like to preserve, please point them to this site instead.

Cheers.

(This is the last in a series of posts related to the startup of a new aquarium. It continues from here.)

This will update you on the status of things as of the end of May, at which time I would say that things are very stable and enjoyable. I will certainly continue to post on changes and issues I come across (most notably my next post, which will deal with a major technical adjustment to the setup!).

First, on the "red plague". The Otos have done a bang-up job cleaning the tank. There is very little red algae that I can see, although they continue to beaver away at something. One more passed away, however, leaving me with three apparently healthy cleaners. Also on the algae front, I have noticed a small amount of "brush algae" on the Anubias, and some on the slate. It seems to be very contained, so I am not going to do anything about it at the moment. I hope that is not a mistake. Apparently, the classic solution to this is the Siamese Algae Eater, but I am reluctant to introduce more stock at the moment.

The reason for the "more stock" statement above is that I have introduced one new fish, a companion for my platy, a girl companion. When I first got the platies for the fish bowl, I deliberately got a boy and a girl because (a) you can tell them apart, and (b) you never know what might happen. The girl did not survive, however, so the one platy has been living alone, only to be tormented by the two danio "toughs". So, I have finally paired him up again. The funny thing is that the platies at Big Al's are substantially larger than where I got the original, so seeing the two together really makes you wonder if, and how, they are going to "do it". Nonetheless, he appears very, very happy to see her, and more often than not they are swimming together in very close formation, almost holding fins, if you will.

The loaches are some pretty cool cats. They just hang around, eat, and hide. They appear very healthy and, with the platies, provide the only real colour. Two interesting behavioural things I have noticed. First, when they eat, they make this clicking sound. I have not had time to research this, but I know I am not imagining it. Second (and I had read about this on Loaches Online) they sometimes like to lie down on their side. This is very disturbing at first, because they kind of look dead, but apparently they do this. So if your loach is lying on its side, do freak out (but do look closely to make sure he is breathing).

The zebra danios continue to be the hooligans of the tank...if they wore jackets they would probably have skulls on them. Despite what you might read around the web, danios are not exactly the most peaceful of fish. As I described earlier, they were the direct cause of at least one neon death, and they continue to prowl the upper levels of the tank and harass any fish that comes to the top. Needless to say, this can cause quite a frenzy at feeding time, for the platies mostly as the others tend to wait for food to fall down before going after it. But I do worry about putting another fish (like an angel) in that cannot withstand the harassment.

Lastly, one more neon died, making only two survivors there. Not too hardy a species, in my opinion, but pretty to look at. I would like to get a larger school of them going again.

So, two loaches, two platies, two danios, two neons, and three otos: a regular Noah's Ark.

Here is a brief foray back into the science stuff. While looking over my visit log and the queries that some users have used, I came across this very amusing site that details the various laws of physics that only apply in cartoons. My favourites:

Law I: Any body suspended in space will remain in space until made aware of its situation.

Example: Wile E. Coyote, Super-Genius, steps off a cliff, expecting further pastureland. He loiters in midair, soliloquizing flippantly, until he chances to look down. At this point, he prods the thin air with his toes, and begins falling.

Law IX: Everything falls faster than an anvil.

Corollary: Somebody will always fall under an anvil before it hits the ground.

Law XI: Gravity is transmitted by slow moving waves of large wavelength.

Their operation can be witnessed by observing the behavior of a canine suspended over a large vertical drop. It's feet will begin to fall first, causing it's legs to stretch. As the wave reaches it's torso, that part will begin to fall, causing the neck to stretch. As the head begins to fall, tension is released and the canine will resume it's regular proportions until such a time as it strikes the ground.

<chortle/>

Someone came to this site yesterday via the Google search query "eclipse 12 fish tank leaking". If you come back, please contact me using the link at the bottom of this page...

(This is the next in a series of posts related to the startup of a new aquarium. It continues from here.)

About three to four weeks into the process, an "interesting" thing happened. Everything started to get covered with a rust-coloured something that, I presumed, was some form of algae. In my previous bowl, my algae problems were limited to "hair algae", so this was entirely new. Much to my dismay, I found it exceedingly difficult to diagnose this using web resources. New favourite haunts like The Skeptical Aquarist and The Krib only offered somewhat sketchy descriptions when what I really wanted...needed...were some images. I did find one site that had algae images, Florida Driftwood, but alas they did not have anything on this.

From the descriptions, I was able to piece together that I most likely had red/brown algae, which by now was quite liberally covering plants, rocks, and the sides of my tank. For the benefit of others, here is a good shot that gives you an idea of what I was up against:



You can see on the Anubias, for example, how it is pretty much covered in what looks like rust. The river rock is showing similar discolouration, and the slate (not shown here) looks like a piece of iron.

Assuming that red/brown algae ("diatoms", apparently) was, indeed, my problem the solution from the various readings I had done at TSA and The Krib was simple: Otocinclus vittatus. As described here and here on Planet Catfish, "Otos" are quite voracius consumers of red/brown algae, and a few of them can clean things up in pretty short order. Indeed, the "Little Monkey" article even suggests that the great Takashi Amano relies on Otos to keep things in check.

So off I went to Big Al's once again to get a few Otos. They were very cheap ($6 for three), and I brought them home and set them to work. While I was at it, I did a pretty large water change (about four gallons), which was also recommended. Well, within minutes, they spread around the tank and latched on! One, in particular, landed on the angled slate and was literally vacuuming the algae off. Another worked on the tank wall, and the third on the Anubias. Within about two days, there was a dramatic improvement although for some reason, one of the poor Otos passed away. I had read that they either acclimate to a new tank quickly or not at all, and evidently one had a bit of trouble (not from lack of food though). Within another two days, the progress was quite remarkable but I felt that maybe the two remaining Otos needed some help and company. So I picked up another three (making five in total). Interestingly, one of this trio also did not survive, but the remaining four have pretty much sucked the tank clean. I would show you an "after" picture but, quite frankly, it would look just like my "first week" picture from before.

Now I have a pretty stable little environment going, with different species doing their part to keeping things healthy. Loaches hang around the bottom, cleaning up food that falls to the ground, Otos keep an ever vigilant eye out for algae, and the rest just hang around doing "fish stuff".

Let's let things settle before I stir it up again. (more)

(This is the next in a series of posts related to the startup of a new aquarium. It starts here.)

A week after setting up the new Eclipse system, I was beginning to feel sorry for my three fish. They seemed very lonely, and tiny, in a tank that was about four times as large as their previous home. Plus, I was getting that itch again.

When I had originally planned this tank, I was all stoked to create an authentic ecotope, populating it with flora and fauna of the same general geographical location, water conditions, etc. The purist in me was drawn to that kind of thing. But I came to realize that that was (a) a pretty hard and time-intensive thing to do, and (b) required more experience than I had under my belt. So my compromise was to create a "natural" environment, with compatible and interesting species -- a community tank -- that would provide a good training ground for "The Next Tank". I wouldn't be a stickler for precise authenticity, but I would certainly avoid miniature treasure chests and deep-sea divers like the plague.

In terms of tank mates, my initial goal was to get interesting looking, colourful fish. While my two zebra danios (Danio rerio) are certainly very hardy and active, they are...well...kind of dull. The red wag platy (Xiphophorus maculatus), on the other hand, has a lovely red/orange colour, and I hoped to get something similar. From general research, I found that freshwater fish are not nearly as colourful as their marine counterparts, so I did have my work cut out for me. By the same token, though, I didn't want to end up with a mish-mash of fish that are, merely, colourful. Kind of reminds me of when the Mac first came out, and people were creating documents with a zillion fonts in them, just because they could.

One fish I came across in my reading was the Clown Loach (Botia macracanthus). This was a cool looking creature, with its grizzled snout and tiger-stripe markings. It was also a good community fish, fit my size constraints, and was a bottom feeder to boot. It would help to keep the tank clean, at least as far as sunken food was concerned. I had resolved to get two of them, and so off I went.

I stuck to my plan reasonably well. I did come back with two loaches, but I sort of also got a half dozen Neon Tetras (Paracheirodon innesi). I don't know what came over me, but I saw them and pictured them glowing away in a little school of their own at home, and so I got them. Reckless. Impatient. I know. "Most popular aquarium fish" (according to FishBase). Ugh! But you know what, when I got them in the tank, they looked pretty cool. Freaky thing is they were almost always together, and almost always pointing in the same direction. The two loaches settled in quickly too. Remember that slate I mentioned before? I had deliberately built a lean-to from the slate because I already had the loaches in the back of my mind, and knew they liked their privacy. One of them made itself at home there, and the other tucked back in behind the filter intake. They do swim around, of course, but they are pretty skittish (even now, several weeks later).

Nature operates on its own plan. The danios, having been the "big fish" for so long, were a little pissed. Since the loaches were considerably larger, they began to pick on someone a third their own size...the tetras. One in particular seemed to be marked in some way (maybe he had the fish equivalent of a pocket protector or tape-mended glasses), and one of the danios was relentless in chasing this poor thing down. It barely survived a half hour, and I was mortified.

To my dismay, over the next several hours another tetra was chased to exhaustion and death, and a third got too close to the filter intake and was stuck to it. Three down, three to go. Was I being punished for my impulsiveness? I know these are tiny creatures in the grand scheme of things, but I really do feel badly when one of them dies. I think it has to do with my deliberately putting them into an environment that caused their death...they were pretty happy, and alive, at Big Al's after all.

Well, the good news is that the ethnic cleansing seemed to stop. I lost another tetra a week or so later in another filter accident, but the two that remain are thriving and, for some reason, the danios are content to let them live. So, for the time being, my tank was stable, and happy, with plants a-growing and seven fish a-swimming.

(more)

Remember when I claimed I was going to try to get some blog momentum going again? Well, that clearly has not happened as I have been simply buried in work. Nonetheless, stuff has happened, stuff that I wanted to write about, but part of the problem was that is was stuff that was not directly related to the sci-tech theme of QMAAC. I originally wanted to spin off separate blogs to cover these topics, but now I have come to the realization that if I cannot effectively manage one blog, how could I possible manage two or three?

So, then, QMAAC is going to broaden its topic scope (for a while at least) to include two domains that are currently very, very interesting to me. The first is aquaria (which you may already know is something I am wont to do from here). On this theme, I am going to document the travails of a new aquarium I have set up (the genesis of which is described below). This will hopefully be of interest to some readers (regular, or Google-induced). The second major topic is "the blues", specifically acoustic blues guitar, which I have mentioned from time to time. The skinny on this is that I have (a) fallen in love with the genre, and (b) have taken it open myself to become proficient at acoustic blues guitar, a la Robert Johnson. A tall order, to be sure, but I think it will make interesting reading as I explore the genre and explore the online offerings for learning to play the guitar in this style.

As an aside, I really wish that Blogger allowed me to classify my posts to help organize this and to help readers find relevant material. Moveable Type does, but right now moving over to MT would require too much effort on my part. I do note, however, that my fave boing boing has recently made the switch.

With that preamble aside, I am going to start this new editorial direction by introducing you to my new aquarium...

---

As I noted elsewhere on this site, my interest in fishkeeping began when my wife bought a tiny bowl for two goldfish. That short-lived experiment morphed into a larger three-gallon bowl that for slightly more that a year housed three fish: a male red wag platy, and two longfin zebra danios. As you will read here, it took a while for everything to stabilize out, but once it did, everyone was quite happy (can fish really be happy?).

Then a little over a month ago, tragedy struck. It all started with a bad case of algae (hair algae, to be precise). I had been doing a bunch of reading and had decided that I was going to move the bowl from its usual location, near windows that allowed it to get plenty of light, to a very dark room. The thinking here was that the light was causing the massive algal growth, and removing the light source should kill the algae before the plants suffered too much. In the process of moving the bowl, however, a small crack developed. I still, to this day, don't know how, but it did. And what is worse, I didn't see it because it was down near the base. I surely did see it several hours later when the crack grew to about six inches long and water started leaking out!

As luck would have it, I had recently been researching an alternate home for my fish, and I had a pretty good idea of what I wanted to do, but I wasn't ready to pull the trigger until this really forced my hand. My goal was to get a really exceptional planted "natural" aquarium, having been stoked by Takashi Amano's fantastic work. Now, with water leaking out, I didn't have the luxury of a lot of time, nor did I have a suitable temporary home for the three troopers that have stuck it out for over a year in less-than-optimal surroundings.

The plan, then, was to get the aquarium I wanted, and create a suitable substrate so that planting could follow, but to get the fish in their new home as quickly as possible. So, after a mad dash to Big Al's, I came home with an Eclipse System 12. This is a beautiful looking aquarium (spousal requirement #1) that is quiet (spousal requirement #2) and large enough to get me something decent while being substantially smaller than the 40+ gallon system I originally wanted (spousal requirement #3). Unpacking the system, I found this was a display model that was missing some parts. Fuck! Back to Big Al's to get a replacement which was, alas, perfect. Set up was extremely simple...this is a very slick product. I also got a cheap, but reasonably "attractive" base which took longer to set up than the system itself. I put down a substrate of Carib-Sea Eco-Complete Black substrate, and covered it with some medium-sized river rocks, trying to give some interesting contours and following the first few steps in Amano's Beginner's Guide, minus any plants. Rather than let the system settle for a day before introducing the fish, I had no choice but to transfer them right away so, after filling it with water that was close to the same temperature, conditioning it with the stuff that came with the Eclipse, I introduced the boys to their new home. After a few tense moments that would determine if they would freak and die immediately or not, they adjusted to their new environment like the hardy souls they were. Whew!

Looking at the new system, I remember thinking, this is a really nice product. Two thumbs up, for sure.

A day later, all continued to be well, and I began to get the itch. Those fish look so lonely in such a big (relatively speaking) place. Some plants would really be nice. No, I told myself. Patience. The biggest sin a new aquarium owner can commit is to do too much, too soon. Let things settle out.

A day later, all continued to be well, and I continued to itch. Since we were having guests that weekend, including the two children for which the original goldfish were bought, I wanted this to look a little more complete. A few plants can't hurt, right? So, back to Big Al's, and I came home with two bunches of Eusteralis stellata, two Anubias barteri "nana", and one bunch of Alternanthera reineckii ''lilacina''. I planted most of the Alt. lilacina near the filter tube, thinking that as they grew in they would hide it some. And the Anubias and Eusteralis I planted on a mound I created in the mid-right section of the tank. I also added a few pieces of slate for hiding places for potential new tank mates.



And on the next day, I rested. (more)

This post will hardly make up for my absence, but it will only take a minute to put up, and it is ultra cool: a wristwatch that displays the time in binary! Once again, courtesy of boing boing.

While I am at it, another fave site of mine is GeekPress ("technology news, shaken not stirred..."), which has pointed me to this bizarre optical illusion, called "motion-induced blindness".

And by virtue of the fact that this link was reported by both boing boing and GeekPress today, here is a hilarious lab report where the results didn't quite meet theoretical expectations.