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.