Think Fish Keepers Daily News. [2016-2019]

Just got back from an aquascaping demo with Filipe Oliveira at Aquarium Gardens.
https://www.facebook.com/pg/AquariumGardens/videos/?ref=page_internal

@Matt I consider myself very lucky to live within a short/reasonable driving distance to several great shops. 

The demonstration lasted longer than I expected. I will admit that my favourite part was when the tank was far from finished, and someone mentioned that there was football on that afternoon. Someone else asked if anyone knew who was playing, people started to look around, and it wasn't until it became obvious that nobody knew the answer that the phrase "that's what google is for" was heard.
Aquascaping 1 - football 0   
For those who are not keen on football, I would recommend spending the hottest part of the day in a perfectly air conditioned shop (where they were serving free tea, coffee, and bottled water), and watching someone create a stunning tank. 

Mr FCMF has been using the Vax carpet cleaner in the bedrooms this morning and has just commented on how much sand was picked up - can only have come from one place ie trodden from the fishtank room!

We had a new lounge carpet a couple of weeks ago. The first 60 litre tank, then the 125 litre tank were both on the old carpet and I was very surprised that there were no water stains on the underlay. I do remember dropping a bucket of old water next to the 125 litre tank but no stain.
For the last few years I have used an old curtain in front of the tank during a water change. It is one of those with a thermal backing, which is like a sort of rubber bonded to the fabric and works very well to contain any spillages, and bits dropped on the floor. I just pick it up by the corners and shake any spillages into the garden.

Compared to a betta my dwarf puffers are much smaller, and their diet is mainly bloodworms.
Should the mood take you, have a close look and you'll see that the head isn't that large compared to the rest of the worm.
I also find it quite difficult to believe that a carnivore doesn't have the appropriate mouth parts to deal with a bloodworm, let alone once it gets to the stomach.
My plakat betta loves bloodworms, and always has.
@Sue I really do think that you were very unlucky with your recent bettas health. Please don't blame yourself.

I use forceps to feed a worm or two to that betta, and he takes them from the forceps. Much easier to control than a pipette for food. They are pigs, and he goes crazy if I try to give worms to any of the other fish or assassin snails in the tank, swimming around trying to get all of them.

So far so good with the new betta. He finally found the 2 pellets I put in at dinner time. He could obviously smell/taste them in the water and was swimming round looking for them. They were stuck at the edge so I just tapped on the tank next to them till he found them.

I felt really sorry for the chap at the shop. He is really the reptile person, but Monday is Mark's day off and the owner was due back from holiday yesterday so they hadn't arranged for anyone else to go in. She didn't arrive this morning so the reptile chap was on his own.
I went into the fish room to find no ceiling lights, and only a few tank lights on. The betta tanks were in darkness - I couldn't even see if there were any fish in the tanks. After he finished with the previous customer, I asked him about bettas and he said 'but I turned the lights on', went to look and came back muttering about fuses. A couple of minutes later, all the lights came on but I didn't want to buy a fish that had only just woken up. So I let him serve the next few customers while I watched the bettas. Very quickly the betta I bought and the one in the next tank started flaring at each other so I knew it was now OK to take him out of his tank.
This shop has a rank of small tanks, maybe 10 to 15 litres. Each one has an air powered sponge filter. They keep the bettas, shrimps, snails and very tiny fish in these tanks (one species per tank). I had no idea rabbit snails grew so big. They were bigger than the bettas 

That sounds like my aquatic green fingers, which is why I stick to the same plants. Though I do seem to be able to manage Bolbitis as well.

It might be worth us revisiting if some plants tend to do better in hard or soft water...

I've killed duckweed in the past