Welcome to the FishHouse Blog!

Electrical Gremlins…

Sunday, November 27th, 2005

Electrical issues have been keeping me from the fish house this weekend, the 6ft twin fluorescent tube needed removing from the ceiling in the garage in the dark, after condensation blew it up, the 500 watt external floodlight blew up after filling up with water, and the 150 watt external PIR/floodlight also got damp, and kept switching on and off every few seconds! I’ve still not managed to obtain a replacement 6ft twin fluorescent tube.

and my Leica Digilux camera has stopped working! So that’ll have to go back to Leica, Germany for repair.

Fish House Temperature Issues

Thursday, November 24th, 2005

The fish house indoor temperature fell below 20 degrees C today, to 18 degrees C mainly due to the cold gale force winds hammering the garage door which faces the direction of the wind. I had only spotted this by checking the operation of my blog this evening. (I need to start on text message alerts from the fish house!). I may need to obtain a sheet of polythene to secure to the front of the garage or wrap the garage in a giant blanket!

I had reconnected a 300 watt tubular heater in the fish house, after trialing the 1kW fan heater, and the tubular heater, was not able to raise the fish house temperature. The consequence of this is a number of fish tanks connected to my thermostat started to alarm this evening.

Blog Outage Again!

Thursday, November 24th, 2005

Sorry for the Blog Outage Again!

Those nice people that host this site, moved it to another server again and broke it! I didn’t notice yesterday, because I went out yesterday evening for my Birthday!

One night off, isn’t bad!

Tropical Fish Update

Tuesday, November 22nd, 2005

Female Platinum Angelfish
Recovering well, after a week of MelaFix, I’ve completed a 50% partial water change this evening with my new toy, more on that another day, on the tank, and added two Bristlenose catfish Ancistrus to eat the algae that the MelaFix has encouraged to grow in the last week.

Sturisoma Aureum
All the fry have hatched in the second batch, and are hanging around the tank, they are not free swimming yet, More have hatched in this latest batch. The first batch are ferocious eaters, and are eating well, on spinach. More have hatched in this latest batch. There is some doubt at present as too whether these are Sturisoma Aureum, need to take some better photographs to have them correctly identified.

Royal Pleco, Royal Parnague, Panaque sp. nigrolineatus L190
I forgot to mention a few weeks ago I purchased two small L190s from Tropica in Knaresborough (and if you’ve never been there your missing out!), when I purchased them, they were in individual tanks, the reason I was attracted to them, is they have different colourations to the existing L190 I have and have usually seen, these are a grey/blue slate colour. They were going to go into different quarantine tanks, but…due to fish moves, they went into the same quarantine tank. For the first 24 hours, they were fine, but then they started fighting like cats and dogs, and almost tore each other apart, so they were isolated, and have been doing very well since, on algae wafers and Sera Crisps, and Bogwood.

PFK has an article this month on L190s, and it’s featured on the front cover, so if you don’t know what one looks like, it’s on the December 2005 Issue, (scroll down the page – it’s on the right!)

#&%@!?*$ Condensation!

Tuesday, November 22nd, 2005

No ceiling lights in the fish house this evening because condensation has dripped onto the electrics in flourescent lights and shorted them out. So that’s this weekends job.

Yipee! Internet is back!

Tuesday, November 22nd, 2005

24 Hours without any internet, it was like cutting my right arm off.

I had a text message from a friend who uses the same Internet Service Provider, that I’d like to share with you.

“like me u had 2 spend a nite watching tv with the missus!!”

Thanks David, it made me laugh out loud, on the Park & Ride bus this evening.

Internet Outage!

Tuesday, November 22nd, 2005

It seems that Eclipse Internet has an Outage!

A Big One! No Eclipse Internet users can connect to the Internet….

I’ve have no 2Mb broadband connection, nor do any of the folk I’ve recommended, best go and hide……

….and 38,666 bps dial-up is no substiute for a 2Meg Broadband Connection.

Second batch of Sturisoma Aureum Fry start to hatch

Sunday, November 20th, 2005

The second batch of Sturisoma Aureum fry start to hatch this evening. I’ve added some magical Polyfilter to the aquarium this evening, I always use Polyfilter in many tanks, just as a safeguard to remove organics from the water, this is no substitute for regular partial changes, but just a two pronged attack against rise in ammonia and nitrite, when growing on young fish. When the young Sturisoma Aureum from the first hatching are a month old, they will be removed to a grow-out tank (which has yet to be sited!).

I’m currently trialing the use of a 3kW fan heater in the fish house set at 1kW, on an electric thermotstat set to 20 degreesC to take the evening chill off the fish house.

I’ve also been using vast quantities of silicon sealer and odd bits of polysterene to stop the condensation drips! In my lunch break tomorrow, I’ll be making another trip to Barnitts to purchase some aquarium silicone sealer at bargain basement prices. Barnitts is an Hardware/Ironmonger/DIY store located in York. If they don’t stock it in Barnitts give up!

Huey Hung Bio Sponge Filters

Friday, November 18th, 2005

No this isn’t an article about the cartoon character Hong Kong Phooey, but with a name like Huey Hung you might think so. Taiwan Huey Hung Aquarium Equipment Co was established in 1986, has been devoting all effort in aquaria equipments developing, producing and selling. They have the finest quality, most variety choices, such as fish food, technical filters, medical powder for discus, aquarium nurses medicines. They are not only successful in Taiwan but also in China, Hong Kong, Singapore and Malaysia. They have gained many high opinions and approvals from many countries. It is also well know around the world, but little is known of them in the United Kingdom, unless you are in the Discus breeding community, where their sponge filters and medications are well known.

I’ve been considering switching to the Huey Hung Bio Sponge Filters range, they have certain advantages over the more common, less expensive Algarde Bio-Foam Internal 200 Sponge filters.

  • Larger surface area.
  • Power-heads can be attached.
  • No need for airstone.
  • No need for suckers.

Huey Hung Sponge Filter
This is a photograph of a test Huey Hung Bio Sponge Filters in my grow-out tank. This sponge filter is the HH-02 Super leader sponge filter 200L model, I purchased this in an auction for a fiver, which is very cheap, RRP is about 8 GBP. The problems I’ve found with the Algarde sponge filters are

  • Airstones need regular replacement.
  • Suckers need regular replacement.

This costs time and money, the airstones shouldn’t be a problem, because I’ve got a box of 250, but the suckers keeping wearing out every few months, and I need to keep replacing them at a cost of approx 1 GBP per sucker. It’s getting expensive, replacing suckers.

Outside Temperature Probe False Readings

Thursday, November 17th, 2005

Ignore the outside temperature probe readings, because it’s not 60 degrees C outside!

I’ll investigate tomorrow.

Ruto Logo
Ruto Frozen Fishfood

http://www.monsterfishkeepers.com

www.planetcatfish.com

http://www.plymouthdiscus.com/

http://www.magclip.co.uk/

Dyed Fish Campaign