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These times are changing it’s been five years, I’ve been blogging, and the software I’ve been using has run it’s course and it’s time to upgrade to something more current. Over the next coming months, I will try and merge aquablog and our house blogs into one blog, with different categories, rather than two seperate blogs which is how they exist at present. This will allow me to blog in more specific categories, fish house, garden DIY, car, computers, internet etc, you get the general idea. So you can select a category (section) to read, rather than ready all the rubbish I blog about. The FishHouse Blog! and Our House blogs haven’t moved and are still there. Just click the links to access them. Eventually they will be merged into categorys (sections) here.
Apologies for not posting for a while, life just gets in the way. But with the arrival of some new fish, starts a New Long Term Breeding Project.
I saw mature large “breeding pairs” of these fish three years ago at a local auction in West Yorkshire, they were advertised as a breeding pair, definately males and females but I suspect the owner, had no success in breeding them and hence they were up for auction. To this very day, I regret not keeping my hand up for longer, they sold for little money! and it’s taken me that long to obtain some young fish so I can grow on, and hopefully ontain some breeding pairs.
Let me introduce you to the Electric Blue Jack Dempseys
Alot has been documented and written about these fish, click the link above to search for it.
Two sites Practical Fiskeeping Article Blue Jack Dempsey identity revealed and www.bluejax.co.uk have some excellent information, rather than me retype it here.
But first things first, they need to grow……and then I can select males and femles.
Electric Blue Jack Dempseys
Electric Blue Jack Dempseys
This is my Arcadia ArcTank, it’s the first aquarium I’ve ever purchased that has arrived in a box! But I think that most modern aquariums arrive in boxes these days.
ArcTank 20L Boxed Aquarium
The Arcadia ArcTank includes an ArcPod 9w lighting unit, which contains a built-in reflector which a 9w tube fits into. It also includes an internal filter not shown. I’ve decided to purchase another ArcPod 9w lighting unit because of the plant selection for my aquascape Nano tank, and these plants require lots of light.
Only one ArcPod 9w lighting unit is included, I’ve purchased the second to double the lighting for plants.
To help the plants, I’ve also order a simple CO2 plant fertilisation set from Sera, called Sera Plant Care Kit, it includes
It works by filling a vessel with CO2 from a tablet, which then diffuses slowly into the water. I may have to cut the tablet in half, as this tank is only has a volume of 20L.
I’ve also purchased a Dennerle Boden-Fluter 4 watts substrate heating element and sera floredepot, which is a long-term gravel substrate with growth promoter for freshwater aquariums. I’ve also purchased some aquarium substrate called AquaClay.
These are the plants I have selected for my Nano tank.
I haven’t decided where to obtain these Tropica plants from yet. But I have several local stockists. I maybe able to do a deal with!
20.7kW (realtime reading of electricity being consumed at 1.30am 27/10/07)
Maybe I need to change the subject title, doesn’t seem very nice, and what’s this go to do with the FishHouse Blog. You’ll probably hear this term more and more, as we all strive for a greener planet and reduce our carbon foot prints! Has the penny dropped yet! But we all need electricity to run our fish houses, every year I see more and more people leave the hobby, and close fish houses, and it’s not surprising with rising energy costs. But don’t all hobbies cost money!!!?
To celebrate my big birthday coming up in November, I’ve purchased myself a present from Better Generation, it’s a Smart Electricity Meter called a Wattson by DIY Kyoto. I’ve already got a few power meters, that I purchased in October 2005, see my review here these record the power being used by an individual appliance, or if you use a four/six-way adaptor, you can measure combined power, I’ve been using these in my fish house for years. But want I wanted was a device that could measure total power consumed after the electricity meter before the consumer unit (fusebox), transmit it remotely to a display in the house, and finally output and record the information to a PC, so I can compare electricity consumption versus temperature in the fish house and outside during the winter and summer months. Also looking at the electricity used by our Economy 7 Storage and Immersion Heaters.
I pre-ordered this unit, at the beginning of October ’07, and it arrived yesterday it’s FANTASTIC!. I’m not going to write a review, because there our lots of fab reviews out there about the product, check Better Generation for one.
It’s a designer gadget with mood lighting that measures electicity consumed and outputs it to a PC.
The Wattson smart electricity meter showing 21,000 Watts (21kW) being used at 1.30am last night, when the storage heaters came on! Average consumption is about 3kW in the house. This is mainly the fish house and computers in the house, most other electrical appliances are negligible by comparison, but if high wattage appliance is turned-on, e.g. kettle, Wattson spots it! and flashes changes from purple flashing to red!
20.7kW (realtime reading of electricity being consumed at 1.30am 27/10/07)
Maybe I need to change the subject title, doesn’t seem very nice, and what’s this go to do with the House Blog. You’ll probably hear this term more and more, as we all strive for a greener planet and reduce our carbon foot prints! Has the penny dropped yet!
To celebrate my big birthday coming up in November, I’ve purchased myself a present from Better Generation, it’s a Smart Electricity Meter called a Wattson by DIY Kyoto. I’ve already got a few power meters, that I purchased in October 2005, see my review here these record the power being used by an individual appliance, or if you use a four/six-way adaptor, you can measure combined power, I’ve been using these in my fish house for years. But want I wanted was a device that could measure total power consumed after the electricity meter before the consumer unit (fusebox), transmit it remotely to a display in the house, and finally output and record the information to a PC, so I can compare electricity consumption versus temperature in the fish house and outside during the winter and summer months. Also looking at the electricity used by our Economy 7 Storage and Immersion Heaters.
I pre-ordered this unit, at the beginning of October ’07, and it arrived yesterday it’s FANTASTIC!. I’m not going to write a review, because there our lots of fab reviews out there about the product, check Better Generation for one.
It’s a designer gadget with mood lighting that measures electicity consumed and outputs it to a PC.
The Wattson smart electricity meter showing 21,000 Watts (21kW) being used at 1.30am last night, when the storage heaters came on! Average consumption is about 3kW in the house.
No, my male lobster hasn’t died, but you could be easily mistaken!
Blue Lobster shell, after my male blue lobster has moulted!
Old suckers banished to the bin, now I’ve replaced them with MagClips
This shows a single MagClips holding an Eheim 2260 External inlet pipe which is 25mm in diameter. Considering the pressure and weight, and stress forces on the MagClips, you can see how powerful the magnets are in the MagClips.
exploded view of above, you can see the pipework – no camera tricks here! The MagClips is at the bottom of the inlet pipe near the inlet strainer.
Not an exciting photograph, but shows the MagClips in postion outside the tank. Here a single MagClips is used to hold an Eheim 2260 16mm spraybar in place. This has previosuly failed with suckers emptying 170l of water on the fish house floor!
I’ve replaced the standard Algarde suction clip, that always fail with a MagClips, to hold this BioFoam 200 Sponge Filter in place.
Under wraps soak testing in the garden are the final three fish tanks for the fish house, three 250l (approx) 48x18x18 inch 10mm glass fish tanks on a very heavy cast iron stand. These will be used to primarily grow on young fish in the fish house. I wanted to soak test the tanks were watertight before moving and filling in the fish house, but I must get on and move them in the fish house before the temperature drops below zero, and the frost comes. They are wrapped because I wanted to keep the worst of the weather off them before moving into the fish house.
Three (3) 48x18x18 inch tanks, 10mm glass.
These photographs were taken on a Compact digital camera, I think they could be better! So here some more photos:-
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