New computer
Well, not quite, but I now have XP which means that for the first time in our new house I am on the internet on my own computer! Yippee! No more arguing about whether kicking James off his for 5 minutes so I can check my email… it’s very nice. It’s also nice to have my bookmarks back, so I can go trawling through my ridiculous range of lit and history e-journals and see whether any of them have managed to put up anything new and/or interesting recently.
Snails…again
Well, this morning I thought I really had killed Ajax (the snail, remember?). Once again he was sort of floating around… but THIS time, he had a Bit floating out behind him! I was convinced it was his guts. A little while later I got James and we had another look: he was on the bottom of the tank, still with the Bit -which was sort of grey with a red bit – hanging out. I was getting ready to go to a wedding, so I didn’t actually have heaps of time to be worrying about the snail. Nonetheless I came back a few minutes later to keep watching, to see what might happen. What happened is that this time he seemed to have something different, greyish, hanging out the other side of him. Because he was on the bottom of the tank I could actually see underneath him, and notice that the red bit was now underneath. As I watched, I realised that the bit seemed to be staying in one place while the snail moved – it looked like the snail was simply moving over it. This is distressing, if you think it’s his guts. I called James, and we watched a little longer… and then the snail was completely off the thing. We looked at it closely. Rather than guts, it looked far more like the carcass of a neon. Frantically, we counted. Ten neons present and accounted for. What the heck was that, then?! We have no idea. Suffice to say, the snail is just fine (of course). It was very, very odd.
When I got home from the wedding, James said he’d been watching the tank a bit (he has come to quite like the snail), and reported everything was fine. He asked whether I had fished out the ‘body’, but I hadn’t… so we don’t know where it is, because it sure isn’t where we left it this morning.
Names
I’ve been thinking about naming my fish. James is slightly disturbed by the idea. I think he’s most disturbed by the fact that I want to go with classical names – Just Because.* You may recall, Faithful Reader (if you exist), that this trend was begun with the late, lamented Hektor. So: the bumblebee gobies are Castor and Pollux, because they’re virtually indistinguishable. The male molly is Zeus, of course; the beaten-up molly is Hephaestus, and the baby male is Ganymede… The Bitch Fish is Hera, also of course. I think the snail is Ajax. I’ve been trying to think of a couple to name the rainbows after, but I want to encourage them to be nice and have little rainbows so there aren’t really that many good role models that spring to mind! Maybe Priam and Hecuba. And I’m not sure whether the neons or the harlequins get to be the Argonauts. One or the other; the others can be the Nereids. Which leaves the SAEs, and I’m not sure about them either.
*Errata: actually, he tells me that he thinks naming them is a bad idea because their deaths cause enough grief as it is.
Revitalising as a teacher
I’ve just been at a VATE Beginning Teachers’ Conference, which was fantastic. Much too short, actually: you had to choose 2 sessions from 8, so personally I think they should have had it over 2 days (I almost wouldn’t have minded were it Friday and Saturday), so that you could do 4 or even 5 sessions. Anyway… I think I am a little more enthused about teaching English now. It’s been getting me down a bit. I realised a few things I should change that should both change student attitudes to me and the class and my attitudes to the whole teaching thing; hopefully this will be healthy. I also bought a book on teaching films and one on teaching poetry; I think these will be useful, because they are two things I’m really keen on. If only HTAV did the same, and I could get re-enthused about History. I might go and visit their offices, and see what material I can pick up there.
Snails
I forgot to mention… I also got a Mystery Snail.
Yesterday, I thought I killed it.
See, the glass lid sort of slipped as I was manhandling it, and it fell into the water. This wasn’t a huge worry, just a pain – I fished it out again and all was fine. However… a little while later I was ogling the tank, which I do sometimes, and noticed the snail was not looking good. Like not attached to anything. And no gooey bits showing. And THEN… he sank to the bottom of the tank! Oh no, I thought! He’s lost buoyancy, which surely means he’s dead! AND THEN: he started falling out of his shell! As you can imagine, I promptly thought about bewailing my misfortune and how bad a fishkeeper I am (because it’s all about me, not the fish and/or snail). However, I decided to delay that a little and see what happened with the snail. What happened was that he finished turning himself around inside his shell, bringing the skirt-bit back to where it usually is rather than protecting his innards, and proceeded to suck scum from the bottom of the tank.
Snails are a lot more complacent than their owners.
It's been a long time, again
Quite a lot has happened in the fish world while I have been largely in communicado. That was after we moved and didn’t have the internet, and then we did have the internet just not on my computer (still the case; have been promised improvement Soon). Since we haven’t transferred the old entries yet I can’t remember where I have got up to, so I may well repeat myself…
We moved. All but the mollies died. We bought new fish (2 bristlenose, 3 cloaches… cos we are silly and wanted to act way too fast); they died also, in a couple of weeks. Highly traumatic.
I bought some new plants. The Lizard Tongue seems to be going ok-ish (not completely dead); the Dragon Flame thing (which was beautiful… and this is starting to feel very familiar, so I think this is a repeat) is all gone – just didn’t cope, for some reason; and the dwarf Amazon Sword is making a serious takeover bid of at least one side of the tank. It has heaps of Sword Clones popping up on runners, which I must admit is very exciting. There’s at least 6 of them now.
So on the weekend… we went fish shopping. It’s been a while, and we figure the tank really is properly stable now. We went on Sunday, and decided we might as well go for a real road trip. The first place we went to was a complete and utter waster of time. Poor range of fish, not overly healthy looking tanks (some of them), and just generally not appealing. Then… because we were half way there and curiosity has been killing us… we made the trek to Boronia, to see whether it really does deserve its reputation.
Pretty much, yes.
It was a great aquarium: well set up, great range of fish, lots of other stuff. James was very excited by the range of cichlids. The one thing that disappointed me was the service; I think it was just the one guy who served us, and maybe his excuse was that it was 4.30 on a Sunday… but still. Anyway: we bought two bumblebee gobies, which is Very Exciting as I have been eyeing them off for a while now; two Siamese Algae Eaters (I had forgotten just how much I like them, dancing around); and the last two Madagascan Rainbow Fish. These last two were a spontaneous purchase… they were the last two left in the tank, and looked lonely. That’s my excuse. They turn out to be a male and a female, which could turn out to be interesting. It could also turn out to be not great for them, because apparently they like to be in larger groups. However, we shall see; hopefully they’ll go ok, and maybe if I ever see more I will get some more.
And today, I went to Coburg and bought some plants: a little pot-thing of Hair Grass, and some Hygrophilia (spelling?), which is largely purple. I also got 10 neons, to keep James happy. So the qt is stocked to the max, almost, and James is being a pedantic pain and saying we have to keep them all in there for 3 weeks. Three weeks! It might kill me. I moved the not-dominant male molly yesterday too, because he was really getting bullied by the alpha. Today the alpha seems to be acting Very Oddly… standing on his tail… as he has on and off for a few days, James says. Sigh. And the baby male seems to be gay.
Did I mention there is a surviving baby? I thought they were all dead. Well, they might actually be now; I thought they were all gone, then a fortnight or so later I saw a baby and rejoiced; and I haven’t seen it again for a couple of days now.
This is ridiculously long.
Tim Severin is my hero
I’m reading his Genghis Khan at the moment, and it’s as fantastic as the others. Different, though: he’s not in charge of this one (it got hijacked by other people). Still fascinating… so much to know about Mongolia, and so little people seem to care.
The first I read was Marco Polo, which was good since that’s the first he did. I’ve also read his Jason and the Argonauts – it would be awesome to find the doco of that to show Yr7 students as we did mythology; Sinbad, which might be my favourite so far; and Moby Dick – both following Herman around, and finding out about Great White Other Animals and their myths. What a legend he is.
I’ve got Mum reading him too. She’s got about 10 at her uni library, of which I am fairly envious. She’s reading the one where he follows the Crusades right now, which is immediately before his Genghis trip.
Bulbs who don’t know what’s good for them
I went a bit mad at the Flower and Garden Show a few weeks ago; bought quite a few bulbs, as well as some nice plastic pots. I waited a little while before planting (I bought them at the end of March). Late last week, though, when I was perusing the courtyard, I noticed that a couple of pots had Green Bits in them. For whatever reason, a few of the bulbs have decided it’s time to sprout… I feel they may get quite a shock in a few weeks. AND I had left the hyacinth bulbs until late April/early May, as instructed, and they had started to sprout in the packet! Also, I planted a couple of bulbs in the pot that had had a cyclamen in it. Said cyclamen has now resurrected itself. It will be interesting to see what happens on that front.
Our roses seem to Praying Mantis Land.
Dead fish
The cloaches have all died over the last couple of days. A couple of them started looked a little healthier – not so red around the gills etc as when we got them from Coburg – but the others didn’t, and they still looked too skinny. And then they started dying. James is very sad and keeps berating himself for being too impetuous and overly eager… we’re also thinking about not going to Coburg, since maybe we were too optimistic that seeing a few dead fish in their tanks wasn’t necessarily an enormous problem. Of course, we can’t shift all the blame. We did buy them, and maybe the tank wasn’t really ready.
The catfish have also gone. No idea why. Darn it.
And, bizarrely, I found another dead fish in the tank, which must have been a harlequin… except that the only colour on its entire body was an orange tip to its fins. No black or orange on the body. Very odd.
The plants are starting to do better. The Lizard Tongues have new leaves happening, which is very exciting, and the Java Fern has a runner!! I think this must be a good sign, after only a couple of weeks.
Started to do a water change today, but then realised that with water restrictions we actually shouldn’t have been, since it basically amounted to watering the plants what with the water going everywhere. So we’ll have to wait until dark. Considering daylight savings finishes tonight (which is sort of bad, but also good because I won’t be getting up before the sun again for a few more months), that won’t be too hard.
We bought some fish
The tank has been set up for a while, and James figured it needed a bit more life to it. So we went to Coburg. We bought 10 harlequin rasboras, hooray! It’s great having them back again. We were going to get a school of cherry barbs, but apparently they are aggressive; I had thought they were the non-aggressive ones, and the tigers were the nasty ones. Anyway. Figured we should actually listen to the sales person. We also got four little clown loaches. They look a bit emaciated; could be just that they are small. I know we ought to have quarantined these, but because there are so few fish in there at the moment we decided not to bother.
We also bought a couple of filters. Coburg has obviously decided not to carry Eheim anymore, because they were selling the filters half price!! So we bought a 2217 for $200, and an internal Eheim Powerball filter for the quarantine tank. It’s all very very exciting.
The plants still don’t look very good. Not sure what to do about that. The bloke at the shop suggested we raise the pH, so maybe I’ll do that after a few days so the new fish can settle in. We’re also putting off doing a water change for a few days.
Randomly Yours, Alex 