Lots To Do & No Time To Do It……
Life near the beach, too many distractions.!?

It’s Easter again and the time has come to get on with all those jobs we have been putting off. It’s gradually started over the last couple of weeks with the fish tank coming in for the spring clean treatment. This entailed ordering some more plants off eBay. When they arrived we did a good cleanup. This was done by removing a quarter of the water, using a ‘vacuum cleaner’ to remove as much waste as possible, scrubbing the two large pieces of slate and gathering up as much of the algae as possible. The planting was then done and clean water was added to top up the tank. The reason the algae had got a hold again was a combination of the lack of water changes and not replacing the eaten plants. I think having a lot of plants makes the biggest difference, its a bit like the garden if there are a lot of plants the weeds are not as much of a problem.

Last weekend after the tank had had a few days to settle down we went off to the Goldfish Bowl in Oxford to start the restocking. The idea I had of just having platys, which in the past we have had no problem breeding, as a way of keeping a stocked tank didn’t work. There seemed to be one fish that worried the rest to death. It has been pretty much on its own for the last three or four months, its’ only companion being four algae eating shrimps, we decided it was time for a change. It now has eight black neon’s, two angels and six more shrimps. The reason we have the shrimps is that due to having small slate chips in the bottom of the tank, we can’t have bottom feeding fish to help get rid of algae as they are likely to damage their mouths.

The kitchen is complete…. nearly, only the curtains to make and hang the curtain rail, can do the rail but the curtains are something I can’t get involved with.

The trip to the Gold Fish Bowl was good, we now have six more platties, in yellow this time. On advice we also now have seven shrimps to help with the algae clean up we will see what happens. On the shopping list was some strip water testing kits which we tried before letting out the new fish and the results were spot on. This we will check again in a weeks time to see if everything hads adapted to the extra fish. The plants have been potted up and are looking good, well I think so.

Thats about it at the moment, trying to arrange our summer holiday and jobs that need doing whilst the weather is fine, if that ever happens.

The weather that is not the intentions of the week they are all going a bit pear shaped. Poor fish another week in dirty water eating my plants. Off to The Goldfish Bowl at the week end for fish, chemicals for the water and something to plant the plants in. This may sound daft but we have slate in the base of our tank with black sand. For the amount of plants we would like there isn’t enough sand so if we pot the plants they will be healthier I hope.

Finishing the kitchen painting is top priority for the rest of the week. This is an on going problem starting something running out of what we need to finish then putting it to the back of the list of things to do. Untill someone is coming to stay then it races to the front again!

So much happened that I managed to get myself and the wife so ill that we ended up in bed unable to do anything but sleep…. All our good intentions down the pan. Back to square one and we are already nearly two weeks into March but the weather is walming up and the days are getting longer so now that we are well again its time to put our energy into things that we want to do….

Its Monday so time to clean out the fish. In the middle of my illness my order of plants arrived from Aquarium Plants & DIY Specialists. I was very pleased with the quality of them as they were mail order I wasn’t to sure how good they would be due to a cold snap (when we had snow). They were well packaged and were looking good in the tank untill my one fish decided the lovely red leaved plant was tasty so that has all but gone. The rest are doing well but still need positioning a bit better which will be completed tonight along with the clean up and water change.

The last couple of days I haven’t had any work so I’ve had loads of time on my hands to browse the Internet. Normally this would cause me no problem as I have many things to research and “no time” to look. Due to the lack of work lately I am all researched out. I can’t think of any thing else to look into. I guess that is a lack of imagination on my part as I have many hobbies:-

The fish tank is looking better and better now that I have organized one evening a week to clean and maintain it so on Monday it had a 20% water change, all the large pieces of slate had a good scrub and the glass was cleaned. When I have been paid the next step is to add plants lots of them to give the algae some competition. When they are established then I’ll start to restock the fish.

Photography is something that has taken a backseat over the last few years due to the price of digital SLR. I have a film SLR that I saved my pocket money for and used through school and college to some good affect but the constraints that are on anyone just starting life in the big world put a cap on developing and printing. That said I was lucky enough to be able to get a reasonable digital camera that was only let down by the shutter delay which annoyed me no end and restricted it to landscape, architectural, still life really anything that was instructed not to move. So now I feel is the time to resurrect the hobby and register on flickr and get some comments. But first the camera! Now having owned Nikon equipment I don’t really want to change so I’ve been looking at the D80 and D200 both very capable cameras but I want to be able to use my old manual lenses on the new body so that restricts me to the D200 as I would prefer to use the cameras meter and not a hand held unit. So now it is the same old problem money and how to reallocate the funds into my camera. Should be interesting until then I shall get out the Canon Powershot Pro 90 and see if I can get my eye back.

Cycling is a day to day hobby due to the commute to work this is not the most interesting journey but its better than traveling by metal box. Again I shall try to enlarge on it over the next year. This may include new ways to get to my destination, to increase the distance and enjoyment. At the moment I am unsure how to do this but the company I work for is relocating as of yet I don’t know where to but it may create some possibilities.

That’s enough for now. I may let you know of more of the ways I pass my time at a later date.

To answer my question – Yes you can buy live fish on line from tropicalfish4u which I will try. I think that I’ll leave that till it warms up a bit as I woke up to snow this morning which was a shock.

I’ll update this post later with some more links to tropical fish that I found interesting.

OK back again.. One of the threads that I went down was looking into algae control without resorting to chemicals and this is what I found out…. it’s all to do with nutrients in the water if you want to know more check out aquariumfish for all the info. The only bit of concerning information was about the fish that they suggest to eat the algae due to their fully grown size see fish that get very large at the moment I don’t fancy keeping a fish that reaches 10″ long my tank is large but not that large. So the jury is out on that at the moment. First job is to reduce the algae by weekly 20% water changes then add some more plant life ready to stock with some fish that will reproduce so as to reduce the cost of restocking. Hence the reason I’m down to one platty as you can see!