sakon76 | Entries tagged with fish tank

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I am... mostly okay now. The first couple days were the worst. But I have more deadlines I'm running up against, and little boys to take care of, and a husband who makes sure I'm as okay as I can be at any given point.

When running errands after Mommy-Baby Yoga yesterday, I took said little boys to the pet store. Squiddle always wants to look at the hamsters first. But he's not getting one until he's probably at least eight! What we were there for was to get some ghost shrimp to add to the fish tank. I got six, for a grand price of $.39 each. (Woo, really breaking the bank.) One has died; the others seem to be doing fine. And since we got back from our holiday I've only seen one African Dwarf Frog. (Though I haven't located a corpse for the other.) Still, a replacement each for the shrimp and the frog, and one more set of fish, and I think the tank's good.

(And a few more live plants. Always more live plants)

Unrelatedly, Wonderful Husband has been playing Pokemon Go for months. It's also a wonderful distraction for Squiddle at, say, restaurants. I finally gave in and downloaded it onto my phone while we were up in Washington....

Urgh. Only one out of the four of us slept well last night, and he's the one who has his own room. Nonetheless, stuff got done today including, yes, the purchase of two African dwarf frogs for the fishtank. Plus another bundle of plants for it - this time telanthera cardinalis. I'm figuring every couple of weeks I'll add a new species and a new plant to go with it, pulling out the plastic plants as I go. Of course, I'm only planning to add like two more species: some ghost shrimp, and probably some rasboras.

One thing that I wish I could find online is a tank stocking calculator. Something that says if you have this size of tank, how many fish you can you fit in it. With inputs for things like "I want X number of Y type of fish" where it will calculate their size requirements for you and do pop-up warnings if a type of fish will try to eat one of the others you've selected.

Also today I did get some more seeds planted. Sugar Pie pumpkins, Charentais melons, Minnesota Midget cantaloupes, Sugar Baby watermelons, rainbow chard, and jalepenos. Counting the popcorn seedlings this afternoon, it looks like I got somewhere around a 75% germination rate, which is not great, but also not terrible for a year-old packet. And that's why I planted the entire packet! Anyway, now I'm at the point where I need to fill more seed starter packs with soil. And research vegetative cloning of my surviving tomato plants....

Not much going on at chez Stonham since we've all fallen under the flu crud to varying degrees. Wonderful Husband took today as a sick day. And even Jazzy has a snotty nose and a nice chesty cough going! But none of it is worth a doctor's visit - fortunately Squiddle's fever broke Monday morning, otherwise we would've hauled him in for poking and prodding. And he was miserable enough as it was.

Unfortunately, however, the fact that we're all sick has meant no playgroups and classes for Squiddle this week! So he's been bouncing off the walls at times, which has drained me down further. Today, though, I'm hoping constitutes a turning point.

This afternoon, while both the boys were napping and Wonderful Husband was vidgaming, I did another session of "tame the kitchen garden." The dead bay tree was put in the brown bin for yard waste, as were the ginormous kale plants. The bin is FULL. No more yardwork until Tuesday, I guess. Though I need to examine the bottom of the pot the bay tree was in, since it died of drowning - the pot clearly needs more drainage holes before I use it again.

The hundred-and-seven popcorn plants just started peeping their heads up today, and the peas/spinach/radishes/beets/lettuce/carrots/whatnots in the one bed I've planted are all neatly sprouting. As are the onion sets at my parents' place that I thought wouldn't sprout, so goes to show what I know! Tomorrow we're due for more rain, which makes me happy, but... I'd kind of like a dry week so the back lawn and kitchen garden paths could get mowed. Ah well. Grass is always greener and all that.

I also did a 10% water change on the fish tank this afternoon and will probably add in a few more critters tomorrow. Likely either a couple African Dwarf Frogs or half a dozen ghost shrimp, depending on which one excites Squiddle more when we're at the store....

I planted 107 popcorn seeds (one whole packetful) on Tuesday. Will be interested to see how many come up. Meantime, in the garden bed I planted with fifty bajillion seeds a week or so ago, the radishes and mizuna are popping their heads up and I think I saw the first sprouts in the spinach and snow peas areas. (Also in that bed: mesclun, lettuce, cucumbers, two types of beets, leeks, carrots, arugula, and parsnips. Plus the potatoes and calendulas that had self-seeded from last year. I may have drawn myself a map so I remembered what's where.)

We bought a betta to add to the tank, so that's up to six fish now and everybody seems happy thus far. I'm going to wait a week or two before adding anything more. I'm thinking maybe some mollies or guppies would be pretty, but I want to do some research first.

I got an out-of-the-blue call today that pretty much summed up to "Hi, you don't know me, but I was given a bag of quilting fabrics and I don't really do that, so would you like them?" Seems someone (I suspect one of my guildmates) had given Shirley my phone number. And I love the fabrics she gave me - they're quite varied and I think I'll find them useful.

Also today, my sister, after two weeks in the hospital, has finally been released to go home. Hooray! This extended postpartum stay involved an abcess the size of a tennis ball. *grimace* Nobody was really happy about that. And she's still on antibiotics. But she and niecelet finally got released. And apparently the frozen breast milk I shipped up has come in handy, so at least that was good.

And, last but definitely not least, Wonderful Husband and I have now been married thirteen years. ^_^ Still my lover and my best friend, even if we don't get to date or dance as much as we used to. ^_^

One little boy napping in his bed, the other napping on my left arm. I would like to be sewing right now, but I'm pretty certain Jazzy will wake if I try to move him.

Mt. ToBeRead is way too tall ATM, but I've gotten through another book I should blog about soon, as well as volume 8 of A Bride's Story.

In the background I hear the humming of the 28-gallon fishtank we took possession of from my parents yesterday. A thorough cleaning, new gravel, and running the rocks and plastic plants through the dishwasher has hopefully taken care of the snail infestation. I've added in a few live plants as well, and as they grow I hope to get more and eventually phase out the plastic ones altogether. Currently the tank is inhabited by four neon tetras and one catfish.

I am so very, very unhappy with the political state in the USA right now. I remember a few years ago a friend joked that what was screwed up in comic books was not the powers or outfits or interpersonal relationships - it was the politics. Such as Lex Luthor getting elected president and declaring Gotham no longer part of the country when it got devastated by an earthquake in the No Man's Land arc. At the time, I agreed and found his point funny. I'm not laughing any more. Time to get Jazzy his passport. Partly to visit his grandparents in the UK this winter, but also partly... just in case. In case things continue to go horribly, horribly wrong.

After getting the three-gallon fishtank set up on the stand where we keep the phone, it was discovered that since it is no longer in the center of the stand, Squiddle can now reach the phone. Which makes interesting beepy noises and therefore must be played with! Since that's the only spot we have a convenient phone line drop in this half of the house, this just means the landline unit now lives atop the fishtank except for at feeding time.

In the tank are a couple of live plants, a peacock-colored male betta (named "Gamma" by Wonderful Husband), and two zebra danios (named "Zip" and "Zap" by me). Thus far nothing has died, and Squiddle finds fishie TV moderately entertaining. Not as entertaining as his Nana's fishtank, of course, but then my mother has a thirty-gallon tank with eleven fish. For some things, size matters.

After Squiddle's class this morning, he and I decamped down to my parents' place for a while, where I picked up two more plastic tubs (the city's compost giveaway is on Saturday; I need containers) and my sister's old three-gallon fishtank. My mother is revamping their 30-gallon tank (the last surviving fish, a plecostomus of 10+ years, died while they were in Mexico) and so has been making me want a tank of our own. That plus Squiddle really liked

toothycat's fish while we visited!

We went with Mom to Tong's Tropical Fish, and happily toured the aisles while she made up her mind what she wanted to add next to her tank. And I thought about what I want in my much littler one. After she made her purchase (five barbs), Squiddle and I went to the Midway City Feed Store, admired their bunnies and chicks, and bought a bale of straw for my garden. Then to home and washing the tank and gravel, setting it up, patiently filtering water, and getting it running.

I'm thinking I'll let it run empty for a few days, then go buy a couple plants and whatever water testing kits I need. Wait a few more days for the plants to settle in, then pick out a pretty betta. I'd like some tetras too, but they're happier in groups of 5+, and I think the tank is too small for more than one or two fish. Even little fish like tetras.

And on a different note, after I put Squiddle to bed this evening, I tore through the bathroom cabinet, purging without mercy. The Squiddle has grown tall enough and inquisitive enough that he's able to reach to the back of the counter, which means certain stuff (medications) needed to come OFF the counter yet remain adult-accessible. I found a surprising amount of nail care stuff, now all consolidated. When did we ever buy that many tweezers and emery boards??