Weekend Update

You may want to skip directly to the photos. Or maybe not.

As you probably know, the hurricane totally missed Miami. Honestly, I am surprised at this as I fully expected something. I was smack dab in the middle of the cone, and at one point the track had the eye passing right over me.

Sure it was 4 - 5 days out, but still. When you are in the middle of the cone 4 days out you should assume that you will see something.

But apparently Ike got a better travel deal to Cuba. So it went there.

Friday I was somewhat concerned. So I went to the store to get distilled water for the fish. The fish live in a carefully controlled environment. Distilled water has no PH and nothing dissolved in it. It is pure water. So pure it does not really exist in nature. I use distilled water for two reasons.

1. I can. The aquarium is only 6 gallons, so I only have to buy couple of gallons at a time.

2. Using distilled water makes it very easy to hold the PH at 7.0. I can actually hold the PH at any value I want.

But there was no distilled water. It was gone. There was stuff labeled "drinking water" but not a drop of distilled water.

People are retarded. If you are not used to it, distilled water tastes funny.

But there was beer. So it was not a total loss to go to the store.

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ANYHOW - a few days before all this hurricane stuff I had to do some serious aquarium maintenance. I had allowed the java fern to take the little tank over. And it did take it over. Looking in, all you could see was plants. The plants were so thick that there was not really any room for fish to swim. The plants were also preventing proper water circulation.

So I had to take care of this. Java fern can be broken apart. So I did this. And so now I have this.


It was a pretty big undertaking. A large glob of fern was removed. Most of it was thrown out. Those little plants to see are what is left. It will, in time, take the tank over again. But this should take a while to happen.

I tried to get a better photo, but it was hard. I kept getting this.


Skipper. I think he wanted food or something.

So what is in the aquarium? Right now only 2 kinds of fish.


Fish type 1 is the harlequin rasbora. I have four of these fish. They are peaceful schooling fish. They do best in groups. They are native to Asia. They like soft, slightly acidic to neutral water. Another reason to use distilled water, as my tap water is the opposite of that. This is a somewhat crappy photo, as it is overexposed. But I am lazy and do not feel like finding a better photo. They are a coppery color.

This is the other fish. I have two of these guys. Chinese algae eaters. I have a fair amount of algae they can eat. And I have a lot of plant life for a small tank. They can get territorial, but so far they are behaving.

This fish is also from south east Asia. Same general area as the rasboras. So I suppose that is sort of a theme. The South East Asia theme. You know, all fish from that region of the world.

I still need to get a bottom scavenger. I am thinking of glass shrimp.

Depending on what the water tests reveal, I may get another type of fish. I like neon tetras. But they are South American - so they will not really fit in well with the theme. Of course, I do not think the glass shrimp do either.

One of the traps people with aquariums fall into is overstocking. With only 6 gallons of water, I have to be careful to avoid this. So I may not put in any more fish.