On the way to the Fishmongers yesterday, Scott’s of Pocklington, this made me laugh!
and if you think I didn’t eat fish, you would be correct, but my fish do!
Arnie my 18″ Arrowana died today.
I’ve just visited the fish house, and found him mysteriously dead. He was okay this afternoon, possible heart-attack, he did not look like he had been attacked by Ernie the Giant Red Tailed Gourami.
I was given Arnie, in October 2009, he was approx 9″, the previous owner was feeding him cockles and mussels, which is not good for their diet, because of the fat content, and can cause fat behind the eye, causing drop-eye. Arnie had slight drop-eye, in one of his eyes, which I think had got much better. I spent many months,
weaning him off cockles and mussels, onto raw King Prawns and Whitebait, he was a stubborn fish, and I had to feed him occasionally with a chain mail butchers glove! because he would jump out and snatch the food from my fingers, and occasionally would bite my fingers and hand in the aquarium.
I do not get attached to many fish, but I’ll miss Arnie!
I’m currently evaluating a new product for the Aquarium, it’s called a Seneye. It claims “the biggest innovation in aquatics has arrived”, after the mad panic, of rushing out to the fish house early this morning, it was a false alarm! (Tropical fresh water temperature range is from 22 – 32 Deg C).
It seems to be having teething issues!
Watch out for my review later….
UPDATE: This was caused by a bug in the software, as you can see on the Seneye screenshot, I’m running version 114, Seneye stated “Additional error checking code had been added into the latest version of the seneye connect PC software which should stop these incorrect readings.” I’ve download version 118, and will install shortly.
Looks like I’m going to have to purchase a new TDS meter, I dropped my current TDS meter, in a bucket of reverse osmosis water, and I now know, it’s not waterproof because it’s stopped working! (if you cannot be bothered with all the text, just scroll down and watch the video!)
So the last sentence is probably reading gibberish for the non-fishkeepers or chemists among you, TDS – Total Dissovled Solids – many different definitions, but in simple terms a measure of the combined content of all inorganic and organic substances contained in a liquid.I live in a very hard water area, it’s like liquid rock coming out of the tap, pH is very high, approx 8.5 (alkaline) – that stuff that furs up the kettle, washing machine and dishwasher elements – is the calcium carbonate (chalk) – it just so happens that the Yorkshire Wolds are very chalky, so the water that flows through the chalky hills, ends up with chalk dissolved in it! (different to when we lived on near Dartmoor, the water was acidic, because the water runs off the peaty moors!). So TDS of my tap water is approximately 490.
Problem, I keep many fish from South America, which prefer acidic water conditions, of a pH of approx 6.0 – 7.0 (neutral). Put them in declorinated, mature water of 8.5, and they are not going to be very happy or breed.
The TDS meter allows me to check, the water quality output after it has been “treated” from, the Reverse Osmosis units, it’s not really “treated”, Reverse osmosis (RO) is a membrane technical filtration method that removes many types of large molecules and ions from solutions by applying pressure to the solution when it is on one side of a selective membrane. The result is that the solute is retained on the pressurized side of the membrane and the pure solvent is allowed to pass to the other side. To be “selective,” this membrane should not allow large molecules or ions through the pores (holes), but should allow smaller components of the solution (such as the solvent) to pass freely.
So the water which is output from the RO units, is very pure, with very little inorganic and organic substances, TDS reading of 000 – 001 is obtained. This is almost the equivillent of distilled water, which is used to top batteries in cars, and also used in your iron, to stop it furring up (remember that chalk again!).
RO water it is too pure to sustain proper chemistry to support an aquarium ecosystem, so I re-mineralised with the correct aquarium salts, or blended with existing filtered tap water.
Here’s a quick video, of my Commercial Laboratory quality ELGA Reverse Osmosis Units, in the fish house:-
Apart from the following video, maybe giving you a headache, because of the microphone on the video camera, picks-up the pump noise (it’s not that loud in reality), the noise of running water may want to make you go to the the toilet!
[flv:https://andysworld.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/Andys-RO-Works.flv 480 360]
Water is fed through the following stages
(it is important, as the reverse osmosis membrances are expensive, not to clog them up, or damage them with chlroine.
Water leaving the Elga Prima 3 has a TDS of approx 0.
I’ve been doing some fixing, the computer which controls, a few things in the fish house has been repaired. So I am able to remotely monitor Fish House Air temperatures, and also exterior temperatures again. Although the external temperature probe needs re-calibrating again!
[iframe https://andysworld.org.uk/pctemp1 480 514]
Update: 20 Nov 11 Probe B re-calibrated – it should be reading correct now.
As a fishkeeper, one of the fish I wanted to see in Japan was Fugu. Fugu is is the Japanese word for pufferfish and the dish prepared from it. It’s also called Blowfish. This is a marine pufferfish, unlike most tropical freshwater puffers that are kept in the UK like the Green Pufferish, Tetraodon nigroviridis or Giant freshwater Pufferfish, Tetraodon mbu.
Fugu can be lethally poisonous due to its tetrodotoxin; therefore, it must be carefully prepared to remove toxic parts and to avoid contaminating the meat. The restaurant preparation of fugu is strictly controlled by law in Japan, and the chefs are licensed, and only licensed chefs who have qualified through rigorous training are allowed to deal with the fish. Experienced fugu chefs in the most expensive of restaurants sometimes leave enough poison in the flesh of the fish to give diners a little numbness around the lips!
Here’s a quick clip of a tank full of Fugu destined for the table, that I filmed in a resturant display window in Asakusa, Tokyo, Japan (22 March 2011).
I’ve been getting enormous amounts of traffic to Andysworld! and Andys Aquatics searching for ‘Zebrafish’, I’ve also had many emails asking if I have some for sale! I suspect the rise in interest in this little fish has been since National News reported on TV
‘Scientists believe that the zebrafish’s astonishing ability to regenerate its cardiac muscle might lead to the discovery of new drugs and treatments that will one day allow the human heart to heal itself after being damaged during a heart attack.’
The British Heart Foundation, has also been running TV aderts in the UK ‘Mending Broken Hearts’
I’ve never heard of this fish in the Aquatics trade called the Zebrafish, but we refer to it as the Zebra Danio, (Danio rerio or Brachydanio rerio). Maybe you have heard of the Zebra Danio.
Yes, I keep and breed these fish, they are ideal tropical fish for begineers and very hardy. They are available in many different forms, pink, gold and purple, long finned strains also exist.
They are part of a large family of Danios, Leopard, Pearl, and Giant.
So now you know the real name of this miraculous little zebra stripped fish!
This is probably going to bore the pants of most of you, but it’s information for me really. I’ve been wanting to monitor real-time temperatures of ALL tanks in the fish house for a while, so this is just a test, these tanks are under contiuous monitoring at present, linked to Internet, by uploading real-time charts, emailing me real-time data every minute and also Alerting me by Text Message to my Mobile Phone or Fixed Landline.
Temperature (as are other water parameters) is critical to tropical fish, under temperature of over temperature if a heater should fail. I can also monitor pH, redox potential, conductivity, water levels, oxygen content and air pressure, if I wish using different probes.
I’ve not posted a fish house blog in ages, and this is an update, Part II if you like, to the blog I posted in April 2007.
Taiwan’s Council of Agriculture unveiled last week that it has successfully bred transgenic Convict cichlids (Amatitlania nigrofasciata) and Angelfish (Pterophyllum scalare) that fluoresce, in collaboration with the Academia Sinica (Taiwan’s national research academy).
Angelfish (Pterophyllum scalare) Copyright © JY Lin Co Ltd
Convict cichlids (Amatitlania nigrofasciata) Copyright © JY Lin Co Ltd
oh dear!
The species will be illegal to sell or import into the UK due to our legislation covering genetically modified organisms., but that’s what was said of the transgenic “Red/Purple” Zebra Danios, that were sold in the UK, because one authority on the matter, thought they were dyed! Only to find later they were breeding true, batches of these fish still exist today in the UK, and are breeding back with true non-transgenic Zebra Danios.
how long will it be before we see fluorescent angelfish or convict cichlids in our tropical fish shops or garden centres?
I’m without electricity today, and again YEDL hide behind notifying you 7 days before the electricity is due to be turned off, and you have to make your own arrangements. I understand this is the minimum requirements an electricity provider must meet.
A few weeks ago, every third house in the hamlet, didn’t have any electricity. I have repeatedly notified YEDL about the state of the transformer supplying the hamlet!
As you can see it’s covered in ivy! That cannot be good!
A few more exciting pictures…
The water in the holes with eletricity cables canot be any good! Water and electricity don’t usually mix! Also a picture of the generator in the generator shed, supply electricity to the fish house.
Not been this low for a while, with everything in the house, unplugged, just fridge on!
‘YEDL – Sorry for any Inconvience’ – Umm, me don’t think so!