We have moved, since the last entry
That was… entertaining… We moved the remaining fish to the qt, drained the main tank and spent a fair while cleaning the gravel, siphoning as much poo out as we could, cleaning the glass, etc. Generally trying to make it look good. Then, because we settled a week before we actually moved, we shifted the main tank before there was much in the house – didn’t want to ask the removalists to do that bit, and thankfully had friend Mark to help out. So it got moved. After a few days, with everything else in the house, we decided on a final position (not quite centre stage in the living room), put the gravel in and filled it up with water.
We had to move the qt as well, of course. Put some water from the tank in a bucket and then had fun catching all the fish to put them in there. The angel in particular didn’t really like that bit. Then we moved it, filled it up with water immediately and moved the fish in.
Unfortunately, the catfish and the angel did not survive the trip. The angel didn’t surprise me, although the catfish did; I was pretty sad, as you can imagine.
We moved the male mollies as soon as the main tank was up to temperature; finally we have managed to separate Miss Molly from the males! Hallelujah! They weren’t looking very happy in there… checked the ph: it was reading low 7, so chucked some pH Down in there, which seems to have settled it pretty well. Ammonia read 0 very quickly, which I guess means the filter moved very well. The tank was looking very bare… so I went to Coburg on my way home from work and bought some plants, and some liquid fertiliser. The most exciting, although smallest, plant is a little Amazon Sword; hopefully it will grow well. I also bought Lizard Tongue, which has big broad leaves, and Dragon Flame, which has leaves that are purple and green and long and thin. I’ve actually since found out that at least the Lizard Tongue is not a true aquatic, so it will be interesting to see exactly how long that lasts. I get a bit annoyed with fish places selling things like and not telling you.
A few days after I bought the plants, I noticed the tank was again doing the algae thing… so I gave in and bought two little bristlenose catfish, which are again terribly cute. Hope they do all right.
Science Fiction
Currently reading a critique of SF as a genre, from the New Cultural Idiom series. It’s quite interesting; the first chapter is an attempt at a definition of SF, and a survey of others’ definitions. I’m in the chapter on the history of the genre at the moment, and looking forward to the chapters on race, gender, and technology. It reminds me again that as a female I am quite an unusual reader of SF. It also talks about a lot of SF I’ve never heard of, let alone read, which is exciting if a little daunting – there’s quite a bit here I would like to try and find. I really appreciate a book like this that takes SF – perhaps the epitome, in some minds, of popular or pulp fiction – and treats it as a serious subject, worthy of analysis, and not just in terms of what it ‘lacks’. I got sick of this during a subject at uni called Popular Fiction, which often felt like a comparison between ‘literature’, which has ‘blah’, and ‘popular fiction’, which has not. It is always salutory to remember that Shakespeare was written for mass consumption, and the theatre was looked upon as a rather vulgar form of entertainment.
Anyway. Enough rant. SF is a valid form of fiction and says some fascinating things about the society that produces it. And it’s fun to read.
Guitar Highway Rose
GHR is the book I’m doing with my Yr9 class at the moment. I’d not read it before, but I was surprised and impressed when I read it – I like it a lot. Don’t know that much of the class does, at the moment, but that may be more of a factor that it’s a class text + they’re in Yr9 than a reflection on the book itself.
It’s Australian, which is nice – by a woman named Brigid Lowry – largely set in Perth. It’s written in a really interesting way, which I think is largely its appeal: you get the perspective of lots of different characters throughout the book; there are no chapters as such, just different sections with revealing titles. Asher, the main boy, writes his parts as a flow of consciousness; no punctuation, etc (much like an email, really…). The characters all go through interesting changes, and there are some rather interesting insights into teenage Aussie culture, I think (it was written almost a decade ago, so I wonder if it has lost/is losing some relevance?). Anyway – at the moment I’m trying to think of how to encourage the kids to engage with the themes etc, and I’m finding that particularly difficult
Historical romances
For a number of years, My Dear Friend Kate tried to convince me that historical romances were a good thing to read. For that same length of time, I tried to put on a distant smile and refuse to be drawn in. This was partly prejudice – I have never wanted to be seen as a reader of romance – and partly because she was so keen that I try them. Last year, however, Kate cottoned on to a means of basically forcing me to read them: she sent me four as a birthday present. I will now admit that I have read three of those (I am still holding out and not reading the one called The Bridal Bed), and a couple of others she has since given me. Some have had surprisingly good plot structures and interesting characters. The basic theme is always the same, of course – boy and girl meet and eventually end up together; girl is often described with words such as ‘wilful’ and ‘head-strong’, therefore making her a more interesting character and allowing for interesting adventures and devious wooing. Some of them have been fairly pedestrian. I think my favourite is Wings of the Storm, because it’s about a female historian ‘accidentally’ sent back to 12-century England. The love story was fairly humourous, but I also found it very interesting how the author got her character to deal with the change in time and scene (partly, she made her an avid member of an Historical Anachronism society).
Much to Kate’s disappointment and disgust, I am still not entirely hooked on this genre – I don’t think I’ll ever go out and actively look for them. I can concede that they are not all as bad as I had thought, though, which I think is a fairly big step.
How remiss
It has been a very long time since I have written anything about the books I’ve read. Recently I haven’t been reading much, because of work, but before that I read as much as always… My only excuse can be that I am slack. And sometimes I forgot that I had anywhere to report those insights/insults I had whilst perusing some tome. However, I have remembered, and now will make an effort to compile these thoughts for some other person’s edification, although exactly who I think will be reading this I am not sure.
HOORAY!
I can’t believe I am finally up to date, and that I am making this up as I go along rather than copying what I have already written. I must say, it was a bit traumatic to read back over what has happened since we got the tank; we were truly clueless when we first got it, although I think we learnt fairly quickly (read a couple of months). I cringe to think how fish-happy we were at first, buying them whenever we wanted and chucking them in. Anyway… gotta learn somehow I suppose… I am looking forward to basically starting again and having a really good go. For today, we have started on the Moving House project fairly drastically: we moved all the fish and the filter over to the qt, and it has never looked so exciting and clean in its entire existence. The main tank now has nothing in it except a bit of gravel down the bottom – vacuuming out the water was one of the more gross things we have ever done, I think, because there was just so much poo…
So from here: we move the main tank and stand to the new house (settlement is Monday!), fill it up with water and put the heater on… Then we move the fish over in a bucket, and viola! the tank begins anew. Then we move the rest of the house on the weekend, but that is another story entirely and one I am really, really not looking forward to. Urgh. Anwyay. James is still trying to tell me that upgrading to a new, bigger tank when we move is a good idea, but I am not convinced yet at all. He’s proposing to use either the current main tank or the qt as the filter for an enormous tank. This is really just part of his whole grand scheme, which also includes a webcam, automatic water changes and automatic pH and ammonia monitoring. Originally the webcam was going to be a roving submersible, but that has been negated as impractical (what a surprise). I will believe all of this when it is actually attached to my tank.
The idea that the bristlenose cats would totally clean up the tank in a couple of days was, as suspected, a lie; however, they have done a very good jon indeed. I am quite happy with them, and very glad we got them; they’re cute, and apparently liable to mate some time, as long as we’ve got a male and female; not really sure what I think about this proposition.
And it’s my brother’s birthday.
We went to Coburg today
We decided that for the sakeof our plants we should get at least one SAE to eat some algae. Most of the plants have algae on them now, such that leaves are dying. We’ve also cut the light-on time to about 10 hours, thanks to a recommendation on TTT that since the tank also gets sunlight it doesn’t need as much artificial light. Anyway, Coburg had no SAEs – they had Flying Foxes, with the stripe through the tail that I thought was the way of telling the two species apart and meant that they were SAE, not FF, but we decided not to risk it (since have heard that FF don’t eat much algae and can be a bit annoying to others). Asking one of the sales people, he said bristlenose catfish were the best fish for algae – agreeing with someone else at TTT suggested. So, because they are quite smalle at this stage, we bought two. They should grow to maybe 5 inches, which is something to keep in mind when we finally re-stock the tank. And to keep James happy, I agreed to let him him buy one gold angel (which is actually mostly silver, of course). So now the tank is slightly more interesting – I must admit it is wonderful to have an angel again. Impressively, the sales person actually checked whether we had any small fish like neons when we asked for the angel. He also said the cats would clean up the algae in two days: this I do not believe. Currently they hang around the heater or on the main rock; there is quite an obvious clean patch on the rock.
James is starting to push for a discus tank when we move – make the qt a molly tank or something… or simply buy a new, bigger tank: he saw a 4x2x2 foot tank at Coburg for $300.
Our last SAE died a couple of days ago
He had some red on his belly, and he had not looked happy for a couple of days. The last few days I have noticed a huge amount of algae growing on plant leaves, so clearly the SAEs were actually doing their job.
I have just noticed that the beautiful alpha molly looks a bit dropsy-ish around the middle, and might also be red around the mouth. Perhaps I am just paranoid.
Another SAE dead this morning
Heseemed to have red splodges on his upper underside. This afternoon I noticed the remaining black widow tetra seemed to be covered in something like velvet… I’ve caught him and put him in the qt. In the process I moved the cloaches’ rock and found the last one – baby cloach – dead. I don’t know how long he has been dead, can only be a couple of days – I had assumed he was just sulking in the hole in the cave. When I fished him out, I disturbed a lot of white gunk off his body; once more, whether this is what killed him or it accrued post mortem, I don’t know.
There are four mollies and one SAE left in the main tank, and three molly babies plus the tetra in the qt.
I lost an SAE last night
We noticed yesterday that it was lying on the filter outlet (which sits under the water, with several holes for the water to come out), which is not unusualy as they’ve done this before; except that he was a bit sideways, and breathing quickly. Looking at him closely, there appeared to be something behind his dorsal fin – whether loose scales or something growing there, I don’t know; his tail also seemed to have something on it, making it a bit opaque, but whether that was real/unusual or I was paranoid, I don’t know. Anyway, we moved him to the qt, in an effort to save the others really, and he died a few hours later. I think the others are okay still.
As well, two of the mollies seem to have black lips! I’m not sure whether to worry or if it’s a result of their eating the black alagae on the tank walls. It looks pretty funny. [Later note: it was from the algae.]
