Owens L'ill Slice of the Web

..is just a dial on a Washing Machine.

Well, the attempt to re-unite Lilly with her buddies failed, they are still in a way too small tank in Amsterdam. But doing OK and provided with a lot of attention, proper water and feeding regimes, and lots of people peering in and saying Hello.
Lilly, on the other hand, certainly enjoys her new home. But was obviously bored, spending huge amounts of time swimming end-to-end and not interacting with the tank at all. So I have put my two little Ryukin goldfish into her tank. So far so good, she certainly seems more stimulated and engaged with the tank, her new buddies and the eternal competition for food
You are not really supposed to mix Comet goldfish (like Lilly) with fancy species, but all the time they are getting on OK and nobody is chewing the others fins I’ll leave them together. I think the incompatibilities really come to the fore when the fish are crowded and food is scarce.

Getting a little problem with those inadequate idiots… the sex-pill scammers. If you see one of their sad adverts appearing in the comments don’t worry, it will be rapidly deleted.

New 110L tank for goldfish

I’m inheriting some goldfish; ones I have been helping to look after for a year now in a Charity in Amsterdam. The people there are moving on and we’re worried the temporary staff the management now favours will not really be able to care for them properly. It’s not that they would hurt them (far from it), but things like feeding and maintenance schedules would go awry.

So I’m getting Lilly, Kali, Chocoloupe and a whole bunch of snails and plants. I even went out and got a nice new, bigger, tank for them

I suppose if all else fails they could go to the Goldfish Hotel..

My bicycle is totally immune to volcanic ash (at least while it is high in the atmosphere), and my travel plans have not been disrupted at all.

Well, since my last posting months ago, quite a lot, and nothing here.

I’ve got a new car, some new fish, sorted some of my life out and been really busy. But no time to do anything much here, I hope nobody comes here regularly to read this.. (yeah.. right )

Current plan is to try and be more proactive with updates here, I have also been putting some technical stuff on my technical blog over at easytarget.org, and I will build a wiki at ezopic.org for my fish stuff. So this remains my personal site, I have a seperate space for my howto’s etc, and a place to write at length about the fish.

I’m bored… bored bored bored…boooring.
No updates recently, except loadsa guff about fish. Well I’m still going to write about my finned friends but I need to start venting and smiling a bit more; so, having vowed I’d stop commenting all the wonks here and just use it as a diary I’m going to exercise my prerogative and say ‘Stuff that! Make more noise.’ watch this space…

Dario dario

Two Scarlet Badis (Dario dario) in my 10L nano-aquarium with some Red Crystal shrimp. This picture does not do them justice really, they are a real living jewel; truly beautiful and tiny (1 to 1.5cm adult size). They are related to the Perch family, and lots of interesting behaviours. I was having a small issue with minute water bugs; sub millimetre dots swimming and crawling over the rocks and plants in the Nano tank. I have always wanted to keep some fish in that tank, so this seemed like a good opportunity to go for it on the basis that the shrimp were ignoring them, but a predatory fish would not. They will eat very young shrimp too, but leave juveniles and adults alone, having some shrimp population control in that tank is no bad thing.

10L 'Jewel' of a tank

I’m already keeping Celestial Perl Danios, and Microrasboras in a 35L aquarium, the Danios are a bit bigger than the Badis, but the Micros are even smaller (possibly the smallest invertebrates in the world). I like these very small species, and the shrimp I keep them with, it’s like owning Fabergé miniatures or a precision mechanical watch, they are so tiny but so perfect. I have a pair of males, I’d hoped the smaller one was a female but it turned out to be a male that had not coloured up yet..

What I had not reckoned on was that they are fussy eaters in a way that would make most girls with ‘Anna‘ really, really jealous. I’m currently having to feed them individual live bloodworms with a pair of tweezers.. But they seem to have finally got the idea that the little critters in their tank can be eaten too. I noticed the number suddenly start to decline last week, and I eventually saw one of the Badis chasing and eating them; they seem to have cleaned them up now. Going forward I need to wean them onto frozen live foods, and if I can I’d like to get them accepting small flake and pellets. I actually tricked one of the them to eat a pellet last night, he spat it out really quick. This may be even harder than I imagined.

We sailed Coppelia for the first time in 20 years! A couple of lengths of the Gaasperplas and a big smile on my face…

I finally got the mast on Coppelia up yesterday, and the sails raised, really pleased!

Still a way to go before first trip on the water:

• Sail repairs: cleats on foresails, rip in spinnaker.
• Mainsail outhaul (clew) needs strengthening.
• Halyards need fittings splicing to the line.
• Toestraps to be purchased and fitted.
• Deck fittings need sealing in place, keel bolt needs sealing.
• Rear lockers need lockable catches fitting.
• Sort out the forestay bottom fitting, it’s a mess at the moment.

The list is growing shorter every day

shrimp, just hanging around

In the midst of bad news in the family, there is good news in my aquaria, I have baby shrimp in the nano-cube tank. And the female is carrying eggs again.

Baby shrimp, and an adult for comparison.

The baby shrimp are amazing, even after a week they are just 2 milimeter long red-and-white blobs, hard to see any detail at all, but they move and feed like adults already.

Keel after refitting in boat.

The keel is now back in the boat, and the new winch mechanism works well. Many thanks to Cassje for helping me to get the bolt in place, it was not easy.. The list of things to do is getting shorter:

• Seal keel bolt, replace and seal a load of fittings, get some matching locks and some lock-plates for the cockpit lockers.
• Paint cockpit floor with anti-slip, make and fit toe-straps, end-stops on mainsheet track.
• General hull cleaning and touch-up, seal up some cracks.
• Mast and rigging; do a dummy-run on the rigging and work out what needs to be replaced, find any sail repairs that are necesscary.
• Test sail on the Gaasperplas..
• I’d like to sort electrics and some running lights out too, plus interior fittings and cushions.