New background on the Fish Tank

I had a busy day with the fishtank today. I cleaned the tank. I shuffled the pumps and filters around. I made a black backdrop for the tank.

Here you can see some of my filter equipment. I moved it to the side instead of hanging off the back. I wanted to make room for the backdrop to hang free, away from the glass on the tank.

The black backdrop is actually made out of cloth. I was thinking of doing some embrodery on it. That just seems like WAY too much work for what I am going to get out of it. I am not fond of the black, myself. I think I am going to make a new one, airbrushing brown fabric die onto a piece of cloth so it is darker on the bottom then on top.

The dark backdrop really does make the photos turn out nice. Now just to get a tank that isn't all scratched up...

 

Jeremiah's new ride

Jeremiah showing off his new car. He just got a new job and well... I guess he is doing pretty well for himself.

Pushing buttons and showing off.... 

My Poor Car!

I bought gas today. First time in a month. I paid $2.57 for gas on the 23 of last month. I paid $2.96 today.

I stumbled across this photo today. I took it when I was home over Christmas. My Poor Car! I tell you what, I am glad I am driving the Escort right now with gas as expensive as it is. The Cougar got 12 miles to the gallon no matter how I drove it.

 

Lightscribe CD/DVD Burner

I got a Lightscribe CD/DVD burner in the new computer I got myself for my birthday. I finally saved enough for a few Lightscribe discs. I must say, I am rather disapointed. This is "High Quality" and took 20 minutes to burn. The contrast just isn't there. Oh well, it is still better looking then using a Sharpie. 

Amy

I talked to Amy today. She IMed me.

She is doing well. She got a promotion at work. A big pay raise and people that report to her.

It's been 6 months since we broke up. I don't think about her anymore unless somebody asks about her. It's been months since I have had dreams about her. A friend of mine says I am not over her yet, but If I don't think about her at all anymore, I am over her right? I still miss my best friend of five and a half years however. That's the only thing that hurts still, loosing access to my best friend for so long. I wish she wasn't a bridge burner...

I went out with a friend and a couple of her friends after the cooking club this last weekend. One of her friends is single. We went bowling at the biggest bowling alley I have ever seen. We where on lane 46. I would guess there where 75 lanes in the place. I hadn't bowled in years. Double digit bowler here isn't very good. First frame of the night was a spare, it went downhill from there. I tried talking to the single friend. She is an accountant, and she recently got a parking spot for her car at the condo complex where she lives. That is about how far that conversation went. I guess I didn't impress her much. The place closed up at 1 on a Saturday night. Crazy.

It was decided that going to a bar was in order. Great. Smoke, Loud music and nothing in the place to drink. Off we went. The 5 of them now started off with shots and a mixed drink. I did my usual wall-flower thing. At one point, the single friend said "I was funny." I know it wasn't anything I had said, I can't hear, and thus talk, when there is that much noise going on, so I hadn't participated in any of the screaming into each other's ears that was going on. I guess she meant odd or strange. I don't think I impressed the single friend much at all, she proceeded to get good and drunk and I would swear was trying to get some stranger to take her home (she kept getting closer and closer and closer to him - practically in his lap after about 15 minutes. Him and his buddy where trying their best to ignore her).

My friend, the single friend, and I had all ridden together in my friend's PT Cruiser. Somehow, we gained a body. One of the guys got left by his buddy. Some friend. So, closing time (well near enough) it's decided it's time to leave. I offer to drive. Great, an unfamilier vehicle and three old buddies lit up - yelling, screaming, and beating on each other as only drunk old friends can do. Three different people giving me three different sets directions to hopefully three different versions of where the foundling lives. I am surprised I didn't get pulled over for driving drunks - spontanious lane shifts in order to make a left turn at the intersection where I was to turn right just moments prior. Stopped at green lights while a decision is made as to where to go next. The foundling's street is found. The single friend promptly passes out in the passenger seat. I finally deposit the PT Cruiser at it's home, get into my car and drive home. It's after 4 am.

Six years.

I was never any good at this nonesense before hand, and then to be six years out of practice?

I guess this is my cry for help.

The House

Here is a panarama of the back yard where I am living right now. I took it this weekend and stitched it together this week at work while I was waiting for my files to upload to the server.

Click here for a large version of the image (warning, 17MB)

So tired but can't sleep

I am tired. I have no clue what time it is. My alarm clock says quarter to twelve, my computer says quarter to eleven. My body agrees with my alarm clock and my cell phone agrees with with my computer. I sync with my alarm clock and my PDA/cell syncs with the PC, so of course that is how the alliances shall lay.

The clock on the wall is no help, the hour and minute hands haven't moved since my migration to Fort Lauderdale from Boynton Beach, however the second hand happly makes the trip every minute. On top of that, the clock says "Who Cares"...

The fish are just as confused as I am. My TV tank light is ran by the timer way back in the corner. It is nearly impossible to reach. I haven't reset it since the clock change a few weeks ago now. I am too tired to futz with it right now. I won't think of fixing it later on this week either.

I think the wall clock has cast the deciding vote.

I am still so tired but can't sleep.

 

MyCookingClub

Last night we had another meeting of the cooking club I am in.

Half our host for the evening, Keld, is grilling up some wonderul chicken wings. I even had two of them myself, and people who know me well know I don't eat chicken wings!

Here you can see some of the wonderful food that we all brought. Grilled Chicken wings, grilled chicken breasts, mushroom swiss burgers, beer brats, 2 kinds of potato salad, coleslaw, baked beans, macaroni and cheese, fruit salad, a greens salad, and I am sure I am missing some!

Everyone was so quiet! The food must have been great. Here you can see about half of the bakers-dozen that was attending last night.

 

Hydor Bioflo Small Aerobic Filter

I recently purchased a Hydor Bioflo Small Aerobic Filter from Big Al's. It looked like it could be a really good product. I have a problem with the top of my planted tank looking like like the water sitting in a dirty pot for 3 days... you know, that nasty looking scum on the top? Well, this product says that it "Eliminates white line effect and surface grease." Sounds great, right? I am disapointed. While the "surface grease" has drecreased, it is still very much there. I gave it a chance. It came up lacking. Time to hack it to make it work better.

This is what the gizmo looks like in my tank. I think this is even what the water level should be from the photo on the box. Ok, maybe it is a little low. One of the problems with the filter I think, is that the water doesn't actually flow through the sponge. It flows around it.

Here are the major assemblies for the filter. The lower right piece is the outer housing which rotates around, spinning the filter that slips over it. The top center peice is the filter foam. The lower left assembly is the turbine and planetary gearing(that is the right name for this gear type, correct?).

Here you can see that the housing has a very wide backplate. I think that the backplate is blocking much of the water flow through the sponge filter because it covers about half of the back surface area. The little round circles you can see in the reflection are molding lines.

Here you can see the modifications I made to the backplane. I used the molding lines as a guide and drilled holes through the filter housing backplate. I am hoping that this will increase waterflow through the filter. I am going to give this modification about a week or two trial run and see if I can tell if it worked by examinging the filter foam.

Another modification that I thought of is modifying the shape of the teeth of the filter sponge. I think that makeing them cupped so that they actually cut into the water, encircling a small bit of the water surface before submersing will greatly increase the effectiveness of the "degreaseing" capabilities. Ths modification will also quickly submerge any floating food too - so it isn't perfect (if it works as intended). I will wait and try this other modification after my 2 week trial on the existing modification. The larger version of the filter may be more effective as well.

 

Loving your Aquarium a little too much....

You know how they say that you need to do regular water changes and all that good stuff... Well, I usually don't. I tend to change things very slowly (including the water, heh). Well, the new light hood really sparked my interest into the tank again. I have been poking and prodding and basically loving my tank to death. During the peak of the Angel Fish Spawning, my PH was down to about 6, so I thought to raise it up a bit. A couple of partial water changes and a small handfull of crushed coral into the filter and the PH is now right at 7. The angel fish quit breeding and the tank looks terrible.

I think I may have over-fertalized the fish tank. I have not had serious trouble with green algie on the glass on this tank before, and now I am scrubbing it off weekly. It is even growing on the leaves of the plants. I have not had problems with black hair algie except for setting up new tanks, and now it is overgrowing my tank!

Another heavy hand at the pruning. Well, I think this could be considerd a case of weeding my aquarium. Many of the leaves where just nasty looking. The tips basically just rotted right off, green algie everywhere, and the whole thing covered in black hairs of algie. Yuck.

Lesson learned. Don't love your aquarium to death.

 

Beer Brats!

Tonight is the cooking club night. Tonights theme, backyard barbeque. Several of my friends have NOT HAD A BRAT! You get back in your chair yet? No... I will give you a moment. Ok, settled now? Good. No brats, I couldn't believe it either. So, I am going to fix this. Seeing that I have this brand new crockpot, I am going to try to cook the bratwurst in it.

The cooking club is loosely (er, very loosely) based on the Cooking Light magazine. We are supposed to be trying to cook healthy and all. Ok, I got a package of turkey brats. Never had them before, but they are on the left there. In the middle are Johnsonville Stadium brats. They are precooked, so I am worried they might be overcooked by the time they are put on the grill. On the right, are the local Grocery Store Deli brats. Only 1 package of them. I checked ALL the sausages in the deli department.

My friends know that I am not a beer drinker. The only way I could walk out of the store without spending $10 or more on beer that I won't drink is to by a 4 pack of pint sized cans (16 oz.). Two of them are in this photo along with the largest sweet onion in the produce department. Your right, need more beer.

Another pint of Miller later, I think the brats and onions look happy now. Get these all cooked up. Grill them tonight untill they are nice and tasty. Hopefully there will be leftovers so I have some for lunch tomarrow...

 

Waiting on parts for my fish feeder

Well, I am waiting on parts for my fish feeder. I am having trouble with the rabbitcore using both the servos and the webserver at the same time. The last one brought up is the one that works.

So, I orderd a Digilent SERVOCON AVR^® based controller board to control the servo for the fish feeder.

According to UPS:

Your package is in the UPS system and is on time with a scheduled delivery date of 04/26/2006.

This controller board will also allow me to not rely on the programming board or having to recreate parts of it when I deploy my Fish Feeder.

I will work on the scheduling software untill it comes, and then I just need to re-write the scheduling side to accomidate the web interface, and the control side to talk to the servos. Great fun! Always easier the 2nd time around, right?

Then next come the controls for the lights...

Beach Place

The beach at night.

A photo of some of the clubs.

Moon and Palm Trees. 

The True Test....

Now for the true test... does it actually feed the fish? Here is a video of the fish feeder dispensing fish food. I pinched a full drum from one of my tanks for testing purposes, hopefully I remember to put it back before I got to bed tonight. I think I want to leave the one drum empty so I don't make a mess all over the place while I am testing the software that will control this technological marval of an aquarium device! 

The Rabbitcore Embedded Microcontroller Automatic Fish Feeder works! I even have a video to prove it.

Here is the front view of the feeder hooked up to my Rabbitcore Embedded Microcontroller. The Rabbitcore will eventually completely operate the fish feeder. It will also run the lights, and take the ambient temperature as well.

I am going to have the fish feeder to feed 3 times a day on a tight schedule, 30 minutes after lights on, 30 minutes before lights off, and half way in between. I am also going to "mix it up" a little bit and have it feed 2 times at a random interval. I am also going to have a manual "feed the fish" button. If this is used, it will count as the random feeding for that time period. I think this will make the fish much happier.

The fish feeder has the ability to adjust how much food is fed per feeding. I am going to have this turned all the way down, and increase the frequency to increase the the total amount they are fed. I don't want to over feed the fish.

Well, here it is... a video of the automatic fish feeder in action. Sorry it is dark, blurry, grainy, and jerks around a bit, but it is the best I could do considering how excited I am. The Rabbitcore is currently running the servo-stop locater program that I wrote to find out how far each of my servos will run stop to stop, and what numerics I need to use for programming each individual servo. The two buttons I am pushing just moves the servo from one setting to the other. This program works well to check the functionality of the embedded microcontroller controlled automatic fish feeder. 

Fish Feeder Final Assembly

At last, it comes toghether!!!!
Here you can see the lower stand-offs. They are simply bolts and nuts. I have the bolt tightened down and then have a second nut floating part way up the bolt to the height I need to get the servo to sit where it should. You can see in the photograph the double nuts on each lower bolt.

As all my good friend know, I like to over engineer things. I truly only needed the lower bolts, as the servo wanted to tip inwards. This tipping would have held the clutch halves together well enough. Not willing to leave well enough alone, plus, I made a special trip to Walmart on Easter Sunday, I added in the top bolts, plus a bracket to hold the battery case back on (I had cut tab and the thing-that-the-tab-goes-into off the battery case cover).

Here the servo is mounted into the housing. It doesn't look to bad, now does it? A little bit of tweaking the tightness of the bolts to get every thing squared up, and I should be done! 

My New Crock Pot

I went out and got myself a new crock pot. I rather like this one. It has 3 settings, High, Low, and Warm. It is designed to be hauled around even! There are latches on each side of the lid to clip the lid in place. It even came with it's own spoon that clips into the lid!

A really neat feature is that the lid has little tabs so you can set the lid on one of the handles and it won't go all sliding all over the place. I think this is a winner, I plan on using it a lot for the cooking club I am in. 

Fish Feeder Clutch Modifications

The fish feeder has a really neat clutch mechanism that allows you to modifiy the drum in 5 minute increments. This will also work well as a servo-saver, just incase somethig bad happens - I don't want to strip out my servo or the gearing.
Here you can see half the clutch mechanism and a standard servo bracket.

A little too much time with a side-cutters and a dremel left me with a hole too big, and a servo-mount too small. They don't seat well to each other. The servo-mount is only slightly larger then the hole, and there are no flat surfaces to match up. It just wobbles around in the hole like a bobblehead doll.

As Terry Hansford always used to say, "I've cut it 3 times and it's STILL too short!" I chopped up another servo bracket a little less aggresivly this time. It is still slightly small, but with a little bit of Epoxy, it should work.

The finished product. The epoxy tube says 24 hours before it is done curing, so in 8 hours, I am going to be playing with it *grin*. I think this will work, I now have a clutch that can be mounted to a servo. 

Fish Feeder Housing Modifications.

Well... After 15 months of saving up my pennies and dimes, I could finally afford to buy the $12 fish feeder and the $12 servo to make the first part of my Internet Aquarium that will be ran off my Rabbitcore 3700.

I notched out the back for the Servo. I needed to cut out that tab so there was room for the mounting bracket for my Futaba S3003 servo. Lucky for me, there are 2 little marks that lined up exactly where I needed to cut.

Here you can see the cut-out for my servo.

This is how the servo will set into the housing. I still need to figure out the stand-offs. I have 2 options, shim it up with plastic or wood, or create nut and bolt stand-offs. The servo isn't going to face much resistance, so I think that the bolts would be the best bet.

Here is what the feeder and servo looks like brom the back. The servo is just sitting in the houseing, but that is really close to where it will be located. 

Daily-Double II Automatic Fish Feeder

Here is the automatic fish feeder that I like. They are fairly in-expensive if you buy them at Wal-Mart, usually between $10 and $12. Don't get them at a petstore as they are usually $25 to $30! All they are is a Quartz Clock movement that rotates a feeder drum. The will feed the fish 2 times a day, 12 hours apart.
Here is an exploded view of the feeder. You can see the clock movement in this photo. You can also see the blue clutch mechanism that allows you to set the "time" that you want the fish to be feed.
A close up of the clutch. You can adjust the time of the drum to within 5 minutes.



My plans are to tear this thing apart and replace the clock movement with a RC hobby servo. By using a servo and a controller, I will be able to feed the fish when I want. My personal belief is that fish would be happier if feed less more frequently. I am a big critter, and I like to eat more often then 12 hours apart. How do you think the little critters take to it? 

Web-enabled Crock Pot?

I was wondering around target today and stopped to look at the crock-pots. I saw there are "smart" crock-pots out now. These have built in timers and what-not. I got to thinking... what if I made this thing web-enabled.

If you where going to be home late, the "smart" crock pots wouldn't know that, but a web-enabled one would. You can just log into your crock-pot and adjust timer or, if has started already, the cooking paramaters. I also got to thinking, what happened if I where to put a peltier cooler on it, so while it is waiting to start cooking, it is keeping your food cool so it doesn't spoil in the meantime?

Hmm... one of the best parts of a crock pot is that they are dirt cheap... $100 worth of electronics into one to make it more-better...


Well, a project for after I build my web-enabled Thermo-Electric Cooler

One of those days....

I saw this photo on Flickr and I just related. That is the best I can put it. I feel THAT right now.

Have you ever had one of those days...

It seems like lately me and my friends have just been beat down by work. Two of my co-workers were mad as... well... mad as I have ever seen either of them today. I got a whole lot of nothing done today. It looks like I have the same on the schedule for tomarrow. Doing stupid stuff for stupid reasons, and gonna make more work for other people because of it. I hate making work for other people. That is why I program, computers don't MIND doing the same boring, stupid stuff all day long, day in and day out. To the person who gives the first computer self-perception, and the machine DOES mind doing the same boring, stupid stuff all day long - I am going to lock you into a small room with it with lots of water and stale bread crusts and NOTHING to do but to complain to each other about how bad your current situation sucks.

 

The Essential Calvin Blog: CVS's pad

You can see a photo of one of my college buddies, CVS, at The Essential Calvin Blog: CVS's pad. It looks like he is finally doing well for himself. He was a temp-service whore for a while. I was starting to get worried for him. He finally convinced some poor company that he isn't completely evil I guess.
He recently bought a house and is setting up his living room so he can hang out with friends.
One of these years, I am going to try to get an invite...

Angel Fish spawning, round 3!

Well, this is the 3rd spawning now. I think I an not unhappy that the last spawning lasted about 2 days before the eggs where gone, and the one prior to that didn't make the night. I would have WAY too many mouths to feed.

I have a new game for you, how many eggs are there! The first person who gets the right answer... saved me from counting all them little white dots. 

Cardinal Tetra Video

Here is an up close and personal view of my new Cardinal Tetras. You are looking into the lower right corner of the tank. A large quartz rock is that whitish blob in the forground. You can see the little tree-stump gnome dude my sister gave me a while back that is the only fake decoration in this tank. I like him buried in the back, you don't see him at first, and then, there he is, peaking out at you. 

Aquarium Video

Here is a video of my Angels and Cardinal Tetras. The male Angel Fish is quite violently cleaning a leaf to spawn on. 

Cardinal Tetras

I LOVE schooling fish. One of the reasons that I am into freshwater aquariums is because you can afford a school of fish.

Yesterday I went to 2 different pet stores. The second trip was to actually buy fish. I went for Cardinal Tetras, and bingo, they had them. They where pretty cheap too! $1.49 each or 4/$4.99. So I bought them up. I got 9 of them.

It took about 3 hours to get them into the tank. I had topped off the tank earlier in the day, and had filled it to almost overflowing. I let the bag float in the water for half an hour (I had to take a liitle bit of water out of the tank first, it was THAT full). Then the bag of fish got emptied into my water change bucket. A bit of airline tubing siphoned a bit of water out of the tank. Every 20 minutes or so, a little bit more water got siphoned into the bucket. After 3 hours, I had about a gallon of water in the bucket. I then netted the fish out of the bucket into my tank. This is about the most effective way I can come up with for adding fish to my tank. The fish get a slow change of water to adjust to, and no pet store water gets into my tank. I have also in the past added a drop of general cure-all type medicine to help keep the fish healthy - tetras are pretty lightweight, so I don't do it to them.
The cardinals picked up their color pretty quickly once they where in the tank. I try not to take photos of new fish the same day as I got them, their usually stressed and their color is off. The Cardinals are getting along famiously with my 3 Neons that I have already had for a while. The 12 of them are back and forth in the tank. A dozen schooling fish is so much fun to watch! The Angels are laying eggs YET AGAIN as I type this, so they have been pretty teritorial the last day or so, so they would run the school off if they felt a little crowded.

It is so interesting watching my tank now. With just the 3 Neons, there wasn't much schooling going on in the tank. When I FIRST got the Neons, I had a half a dozen, and they didn't school up all that much even then. It looks like somewhere between half a dozen and a dozen might be the number to half to get good schooling behavior. We will see how many of the Cardinals make it a week.