Think Fish Keepers Daily News.

I just showed this to Mrs Matt, a mathematician, who has informed me that the glass is in fact full its just half water and half air...

I just showed this to Mrs Matt, a mathematician, who has informed me that the glass is in fact full its just half water and half air...

Nice. I like that.

The other way of looking at it is that the glass is half full if it was in the process of being filled....if the glass was full and a drink has been taken/water has been removed, it is half empty....if in doubt, check your parameters & do a water change. 

@Helen thanks for making me laugh, what a great way to start "nearly the weekend" (aka Friday). 

Matt's post was a reply to the "3 glasses" image in Littlefish's post on the previous page 

I thought I'd run a cotton bud along the inside rim of the fishtank, where the hood closes down and sits, as I thought I saw a spec of green. What a surprise I got - a cotton bud wasn't sufficient to cope with what was there, so I used some filter wool in addition. Suffice to say that there was enough algae that it looked like almost a teaspoonful's worth!

Just a reminder to use the community creator and check compatibility.
Nobody likes a pushy tank-mate that invades your personal space. 

Fantastic - you seem to be "on form" (4-hour roundtrips specifically to visit a fish/aquatic shop) although I'm somewhat surprised and at least mildly disappointed that you didn't buy anything. 

We have been out this afternoon on a trip to the three garden centres very close together. One of them is the garden centre that burned down last year, along with Maidenhead Aquatics.
As we pulled into the car park we could see that the site of the old garden centre is stripped completely; there is a very large new building to one side and in front of that was a new one storey building with Maidenhead Aquatics signs all over it. So I had to go and look.
It's not as big as the old one, but there were 4 ranks of tanks, 2 were empty and 2 had fish in though there were empty tanks even in these two. Mainly bread and butter fish, but hopefully as they restock they'll be getting more unusual fish like they had before.

Since the 4 ranks of tanks formed a U shape, I wonder if they'll all be fresh water. The old MA had a marine section separated from the freshwater section by the plants, baskets of rock and baskets of wood. Though there was something in the middle of the shop that I presume is going to be a pond of some sort. Either that or a hot tub for the staff 

What a strange day, in a good way.
I went to the LFS this morning to get some frozen bloodworms and a black background for a tank. Got chatting about stuff to the staff, and had a bit of a look around.
Another customer came in with some fish, plants, & wood from his tank. We got talking and he showed me pictures of his tank before he'd removed the plants, fish etc. - it was jam packed with massive, healthy plants. Tim (LFS staff) took the drift wood out of the bin liner it had been brought in, and my little face lit up. 
The customer who had brought the stuff in gave me a bag of crypts (the bunch on the left of the tank in the picture), and Tim sold me the wood and attached crypts for £25.
To give you some idea of the size, they are in a Fluval Roma 200.
The wood may end up in the river tank, or perhaps in Bertie the BN's tank, and I'm sure we can find somewhere for the crypts in one of the tanks @Matt , but I couldn't leave without them. 

Yes, they will be quarantined like this before use. One of the good things about my total tank chaos is always having a spare tank. 
They've got a heater, filters, plenty of water, ferts, and light, so I'll be interested to see what happens over the next few weeks.
The chap who had the plants used CO2, and had quite a fancy set up, so I can't imagine that the plants will continue to look like this with my low tech approach. Still, crypts have always done quite well for me, so we'll see.

I couldn't believe how lucky I was at the LFS. 

Your fish antics sounds fascinating. I've seen some of my tetras follow behind corys when they are rummaging through the sand, but I've not seen fish do what your x-ray and harlie were spotted doing. That's genius. 

Glad to hear that your gang are enjoying the season.

On a similar topic, I saw this and couldn't resist sharing it.

Sorry to hear about your rasbora @fcmf   

Thanks, both. I've replayed it over and over in my mind and think I am to blame, though - normally, I "forewarn" everyone and calmly chat to them that I'm about to undertake their water change, whereas I was a bit distracted on Fri and a bit too methodical and efficient - whisking out the hornwort and java fern, then realising I'd a couple of cuts on my fingers which were stinging from the water and grabbing a towel, then experimenting with the spray bar which ended up sending the water upwards towards the rear/back of the tank. If the fish had inadvertently accompanied the plants out of the tank, then lifting the neighbouring towel might have sent it skidding under the fishtank cabinet or it may have leapt out of the plants and under the fishtank cabinet while I was rinsing my cuts under the tap before putting on gloves. The fish transpired to be the one which enjoyed surfing the water current and swimming vertically in it along the opposite side of the tank - gutted to have lost the quirky one of that shoal - so it's possible it may have availed of the several seconds' experimentation with the spray bar and ended up catapulting back the couple of inches straight through the slat.
 
As you say, though, and given how dry it was when discovered, this surfing fish which had taken to splashing at the water surface and in the hornwort may actually have escaped out pre- water change.

Separately, I have the harlequin with the intermittent lesion on its side currently under eSHa 2000 treatment in the hospital tank - it looks like a recurrent injury but may be a bacterial infection (no sign of parasites) albeit not as deep as the ulcer-like hole one of the female x-rays had. I may have mentioned before that his spine is twisted slightly in an S shape when viewed from above. Post- water change, he was shoaled up with the others rather than in his usual quiet spot near the top on his own, and I noticed how pale he was in comparison with them. I hadn't treated him before now but thought this was the opportunity to do so while he is constitutionally still strong and eating but does seem to be declining somewhat. The treatment may not help but I thought it worth a try before too late and to avoid any regrets.

Second bit of advice online!!

Glad to hear that you have power again.
I'll bet that was a bit tense for a while.

Good to hear the female goldeneye is on the mend matt. I've put some sponges from a filter i brought to seed in my main tank today to help when i break the tank down in 6 to 8 weeks. I'm really enjoying planning all this at the moment and on tuesday i'm off to Aqua Essentials in devon to have a look around, I'm also going to buy a JBL pro flora c02 system.

I'm sorry to hear that   

As you say, he was getting on a bit, and it is definitely much easier when it's natural causes.

So sorry to hear that Little Harley has passed.
It is sad and unexpected news. 

Hi Folks,

Took this piccie yesterday of a spawning pair of our eight-month old GBRs. This is our sixth pair of GBRs to spawn in the last week!

JPC

Awesome pic, and congratulations! I am hoping to get a few GBRs this weekend... I miss having them so much... can decide whether to get Bolivian Rams instead as they are a bit hardier though... what is your water hardness and nitrate levels?

Hi Matt,

Thanks for the kind words. Water hardness in this tank is 8dGH and TDS is approximately 300ppm. I normally keep hardness a tad lower at 6dGH and TDS around the 250ppm mark. Nitrate is 15ppm. It's often thought that pH has to be 'low' for GBRs but the pH in this tank is around 7.70 (measured using a recently-calibrated Extech PH100 meter). Tank temperature is 26.0 - 26.5C. I should add that I use RO water as my starting point to which I add Tropic Marin Re-Mineral Tropic electrolytes.

JPC

9 POSTS AT THIS POINT IN THE THREAD HAVE BEEN MOVED TO https://forums.thinkfish.co.uk/fish-health/fish-health-in-my-tank/ POSTS 52-60, AS THEY SAT MORE APPROPRIATELY THERE.    I HADN'T MERGED TOPICS FOR A WHILE AND, IN MY CONFUSION/PANIC, REALISE I FORGOT TO POST AN OFFICIAL 'RE-DIRECTION' TOPIC - APOLOGIES.   

The only long power outage we've had was 8 hours - but we knew about it a couple of weeks in advance so I was able to prepare. It was planned work on the substation.
A couple of years ago we had another letter saying we'd be without power for a few hours on this date, but things went awry with that one - the planned repair turned into an emergency repair without notice a few days earlier than planned. The power was off for about 3 hours, and everyone survived despite me not being able to arrange things in advance. (At least we were not in the houses that lost their power in the middle of the night and spent the following day on generators while NEDL repaired whatever it was)

Mrs Matt found a cherry shrimp in the office today. The little guy had somehow got out of the tank in the sitting room, across the hall carpet and on into the study... quite impressed though equally sad at the same time. I guess it will have been from the final round of esha ndx I gave the tank to deal with any last camallanus worms. The shrimp went to the surface and out of their normal cover when I dosed it.

I moved the Amano shrimp out before dosing but have only managed to find 2 in the puffer tank to move back in so far... might take me a few days to spot them all...