Entries by Cassandra Brockett

So, it's been a while, mostly as I've had about 25 billion little projects and things come my way in the last little while.

First off I started looking into the Arduino boards, they're so cheap it's scary. And they've reminded me of a whole bunch of little project things I used to do when younger.

So, the hubby and I have had a lot of fun hauling out the old soldering station, getting workspace cleared up, setting up new boards, testing things, etc. It's given me some neat ideas on things to do around the place, so I suspect there will be some additional stuff coming along here eventually once things get settled.

Next, we picked up a 3d-printer (A Mendel-Prusa reprap, from Makergear), that guy has been giving us some fun little fiddling, in fact it's been a huge time sink for me the last few days. First off it took us a week to build it (as we could really only work on it at night), then it's been a week or so of printing calibration and alignments... it's only been in the past few days that we've really gotten some nice prints. I've gotten pics from it, but those will have to wait until tomorrow.

The above things have taken a lot more of my time than I had realised, so much so that I'm actually glad I've got a few minutes to update this. That's good though as we needed some things to do other than play computer games when not working

So, over the weekend, we finally made the decision to move the Pleco to a holding tank while we try to find someone who wants to take it.

This morning, I therefore started to set up the new tank for the Pleco, given that not much was going to be needed in it, I was lucky in that I could reuse most of the "spare" supplies we have collected, and the old 16 gallon bow-front tank. That went well, and I used four and half (approx) gallons of water from the old tank to get the new tank water settled. Water temps matched, so time to move the pleco.... more difficult than expected and wound up having to clear a few things out of the tank that we'd been looking to move for a while. The new tank is set up with the following:-

• 10w heater (the water temp in the freshwater tank has been set around 72F for a while, so this heater should be enough to keep the tank close).
  
• 23" Bubble wand connected to an air pump (you can see it snaked in the tank, it does not fit across anywhere).
  
• Hydor 240 circulation pump (the freshwater tank has a canister filter moving water around, so this should replicate that).
  
• The Marineland Double-Bright LED fixture.
  

I'd still like to get a small filter for the tank, as I'm not sure how long we'll have the Pleco for, and would like it in good health when I give it away, and I should get a larger heater, at least as backup for the freshwater tank, probably another 200w would be fine.

So, anyhow, here's a picture of the Pleco's new home...



Then I noticed the original tank was looking rather bare, as I moved the cave with the pleco, here's a slightly older shot of the tank. The cave on the right was removed and moved to the new holding tank.



So, I figured, heck I have the new substrate I want to use for the plants, I have the little pots (Net Pots they're called, primarily used for Hydroponics), and I have time and a tank that's already been upset with the move... might as well clean it up a tad more.

	So, I moved all the plants I wanted to replant out to a small bucket with a little bit of water from the tank.
	Then I moved the substrate from the bag to a few extra plastic buckets I had around.
	After about an hour or so, this needed to be done carefully and slowly, as not only did the plants need to go into the pots correctly, but the pots also needed to be placed in the aquarium slowly and carefully so they didn't cloudy the water too much.

The fish in the front right isn't all that well either... but he was part of the reason we decided to move the Pleco.

And there, finally done. The water is still a tad cloudy at the moment, and I'll need to clean the pre-filter on the canister filter in an hour or so, then again tomorrow, but the following scape is pretty much how it's currently looking. It might get a slight overhaul during the week, or this weekend.

So, finally cleaned up the code enough, that I've released the first Open-Source version of TankStats.

You can find it at the TankStats Google Code Site (http://code.google.com/p/tankstats/).

If you use it, please let me know what you think of it, either here or over on the Google Code site, also please note that the Google Code site is the only place I'll actually pay attention to bug reports...

The new light came in for the SW tank, so I've got a new pic for it.

SW Pico - Day 11

And here's the current pic of the FW tank.

Freshwater Tank

So, went to the LFS today to pick up some more livestock, I wanted to grab some more CUC for my saltwater tank, and some more fish for the freshwater tank. We went there, and it was mobbed, more than it usually is on the weekend, so we figured we'd stick to the saltwater stuff, especially as some of the hardware I wanted wasn't in yet.

Anyhow, I grabbed another Blue-Legged Hermit crab, and another Trochus snail, the other two have been having so much fun vooming around the tank, I figured we'd get them some friends. While there, and talking to the owner, I decided I'd see if I could kill off... errr... keep some corals, even though the tank is still new. Talking to the owner, I figured grabbing a few things from the "$10 coral bin" would not be a bad choice, so I now have a Kryptonite Candy Cane (it's an LFS), two Mushrooms, and what I think is Green Star Polyps. I've placed them in the tank as well as I can for the time being, I have glue and putty to hold them in place once we're sure this is where they will reside (we are going to be replacing the main tank light, so that might change how things sit in the tank).

And speaking of that, a few pictures. Some people seem to think keeping saltwater is hard with all the testing.... here's the before and after shots of what my weekly test setup is like...

Before the tests...

And then after...

Notice the time on the clock of the stove... I then spend about 15 minutes cleaning up everything, washing test tubes, etc. And from that I then have to do water changes, or other things the two tanks need...

While we where out getting stuff, the hubby suggested we should stop by IKEA as he had an idea for a tank "hood"... he does have lots of good ideas at times, so off we went. Turns out the little stand thing we put together and drilled holes through to put the tank on is just the right size to use as a hood... so....

Before install

The new hood, with the light fixtures attached.

After install

Yeah, that's still the Marineland Doublebright, but there is now a decent 3W Moonlight, and we've added a semi-proper refugium light for the Chaeto. I do need to run both of those manually for the time being.

And so, at the end of the day, here is the new FTS for the Saltwater Pico:-

Day 7 FTS

The Corals

Anyhow, it's late, and I'm off to bed, night all!

Okay, so picked up the two Amano's on Tuesday... yesterday and today no sign of the little guys. I've been told they can be jumpers, and with not seeing them and all, I'm concerned they're gone. Now, the kind people over at the Planted Tank forums tell me that it's fairly standard for Amano's to go missing for days at a time, and given what other research I've done online, that's fairly standard, they could also be moulting, or been eaten by my Pleco (unlikely, but possible).

Given they lasted a few days, and seemed happy the entire time, I'm hoping they're just off hiding in the tank somewhere and will show up again later...

Freshwater Tank

Also, I finally got my invite into the Mists of Panderia Beta... as did about 75,000 other people, who all logged in at the same time... So, I figured, I'd just let the comp catch up on the download and left it alone. I expect they're will be a huge pile of people wandering through it this weekend, so I'm intending to leave it alone until next week at this point. Fairly typical childish behavior from all the people who got into the Beta, but I've been in enough MMO Beta's at this point, I try to just leave them be until things settle down enough for normal people to really try them out.

Anyhow, nothing major today, hoping to pick up a few random little bits for the tanks tomorrow, we'll see how that goes.