Archive for the ‘Aquarium’ Category

It’s coming to the end of the year again. Towards the end of each year, I’d sit back and reflect on some of the key events and decisions made in the past year or so. It’s a pretty interesting exercise as you’ll see the decisions that turned out right, and those that turned out all wrong; all with the benefit of a mite bit of hindsight at the end of the year now.

So, running off my head and in no particuar order:

Going to Phuket first in June then Bali later in September (WIN). Because right smack on the week we were in Bali in September, thousands of travelers in Singapore had to postpone their Phuket trip because the airport had shut down! Too funny for words. Bali posts tagged here, with Phuket ones here.

Having a baby (IN PROGRESS). Well, not saying too much away here, but the decision wasn’t an easy one. There were concerns about health and well-being for example. Funnily, we faced little of the ‘traditional’ sort of pressures. Oh, Ling’s mum asked about it now and then, but there was absolutely no (even polite) queries or pressure exerted on my side of the family. Nor did the announced incentives in August factor into our decisions. First announced here.

Going with a Nissan Latio (WIN). Well, on the upside, the car hasn’t broken down. Moreover, our Latio survived pretty much unscathed compared to the Honda Civic I bumped into nearly a year ago. On the down side, Ling’s been remarking that the car makes funny squeaky noises occasionally, and doesn’t give her the vibes that the Latio is better built than the old Civic we were driving. And we haven’t been getting the 14 km/litre fuel consumption milleage some drivers claimed. But a 12.5 to 12.8 km/litre isn’t too bad. First blogged here, then here.

Red and silver.

Publishing a book (WIN). This, funnily, was the hardest decision I’ve made this year. My work and research has been published in several places prior to this of course, but publishing in academia is quite different from producing a commercial publication. There’s all the legalese in the author’s contract with the publisher, all my liabilities since there’re now new issues of distribution, ownership and copyright. And to top if all off, it’s not as though my book is gonna be selling a million copies allowing me to enter early retirement. The summative royalties I expect are essentially, for lack of a better word, non-existent. First blogged here.

Deciding between a PS3 or an XBox 360 (WIN). No kidding! I had long chats with Matt about the virtues of one console over the other. Moreover, the decision wasn’t as simple as which had the games I was interested in or studying. The decision to go with one of them was made when the high definition standards war was raging, and investment in the PS3 wasn’t a sure decision. It could had turned into a white elephant! First blogged here then here.

Of course I could have bought both, like Matt…

Ling having a go with Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune.

Investing in a new camera system (IN PROGRESS). And what a huge investment it turned into. I was determined to get it right this time by doing proper research, and proper accounting to what I was acquiring. So far, so good. Ok, so the photos are still a long way off to progressing from ‘crappy’ to ‘mediocre’, but I’m working on it! First blogged here.

Trying to fatten Matt up (LOST). As soon as Matt firmed up arrangements to visit and stay with us for a month in June this year, Ling and I drew up a strategy to make sure that this time, he’d leave Singapore weighing heavier than he arrived. And boy, did we try hard! We enlisted everyone’s help. Even my mum, and Doreen. Even our small group was involved. But Matt easily showed that he could beat us all without trying, and he left Singapore weighing less than when he arrived. So we failed miserably again.

He conquered durians even.

But as soon as he’s firmed up plans for a third visit, this time, it’s WAR. If we have to bury him with Banquet pratas or drown him with teh tariks this time, we will!! Ling’s tribute to The Champion here.

There you go. If I can think of any more significant milestones, I’ll append them here later.

The highlight of the first day with Dewa Marco, a driver I’ve decided to coin as “The Best Driver in Bali”, was our sunset visit to Tanah Lot. This temple sits on a rock formation and is set some distance from the shoreline, and is only accessible in low tides. At high tides and sunset, the temple offers stunning views that one can find pictures of with some Googling.

As for the both of us, we decided to do a slightly off beaten route by heading to the shoreline on the other side of Tanah Lot, and I finally got to use my newly acquired B+W neutral density filter. Here’s a small selection of the sunset shots, taken using stacked ND + CPL filters, with exposure times of about 20 to 25. For the second shot in this post, Ling had to remain absolutely still for 6 seconds; I got another shot of her in the same backdrop where I opened the shuttle for 30 seconds… but she moved LOL :).

One of those things about attending ornamental fishes and aquarium exhibitions like these is that you get very inspired about setting up your own aquarium if you haven’t already got one - and in our case, feeling very dejected at how awful ours look in comparison to the demonstration setups we saw.:)

The exhibition was held at Suntec City over a period of four days, with the last two days opened to the public. There were many families there, and at least a few carted back 1 to 1.5 small tanks when they left the place. Hopefully the kids who’re likely going to get acquired to their new hobby will at least get some guidance on the many aspects of keeping fish alive and healthy. Keeping these little critters isn’t simply a matter of just getting a bucket of water and tossing them in.

There were several competitions running in the conference; for freshwater planted tanks, marine tanks, and the different families of fishes, including Arowanas, Cichlids, Plecos, Goldfishes, Discuses, Bettas, and Guppies. Some of the goldfishes look pretty grotesque even, what with their super-bloated bellies. Ugh. I was pretty disappointed to see that my favourite critters - Corydoras - were not well-represented though. It was a really wonderful way to spend the later part of Sunday morning, and we walked off with several new plants for our sitting room tank and a whole bag of “night reading” materials and brochures.:)

We had a nasty outbreak of algae in our tank last week, and this is despite the fact that we’ve got five Ottocinclus critters living in the tank. These five Ottos are quite a temperamental bunch: of the five, two of them are so fat from chewing up algae they look like they’re about to burst. They’ve effectively stopped eating. Two others seem to enjoy grazing on the gravel instead of the leaves. The fifth one seems to be doing his job at least and valiantly trying his best to eat up all the green mess.

I suspect the algae outbreak has been because of the new replacement florescent tubes we’ve installed in the aquarium lighting system. In any case, we decided to go for a two prong approach: we went by Nature Aquarium at Balestier on Saturday to pick up three more Ottos. and also a whole bunch of plants from there and also Sea View at Seletar (the following day we topped them all up with more plants from Aquarama). Right now, the tank looks, visually, a mess - but it’s heavily saturated with plants, hopefully sufficient enough to eat up all the nutrients I’ve got in the gravel and leave nothing to the algae.

The picture here is as it was on Saturday evening, without the new plants we picked up at Aquarama the following morning on Sunday. The tank setups we saw at the exhibition at Suntec City were amazing. Our next home we’ll have to invest in a four footer tank.:)

Upon reading my earlier entry on our new Sterbai Cory - which Ling has named GG - addition to the tank, I realized that it’s rather difficult to tell the relative size of this gentle giant compared to the other Corys in the tank. So here’re two quick pictures I snapped in the evening to better show how they compare.:)

The four types of catfishes nicely caught in the picture above. From left to right, a Leopard Cory (they look very similar to Sterbai Corys), one of our five pygmy catfishes or Ottocinclus, GG, and a Bronze Cory. They’re scrounging around for tasty morsels in the gravel; those white little bits that you see in the picture are fish food.:)

They’re a lovely bunch. Ling’s gradually growing to them too.:)

The last of the four Lionheads, Patches, expired a fortnight ago after losing a bout with white spots. Ling was especially sad since they were the four critters that got us started on our aquarium hobby. We decided to start anew with a new tank, so on the 19 March Sunday, headed out after the morning service at Wesley to several aquarium shops all over Singapore to pick up what we need.

Many Singaporeans would have kept an aquarium at some point of their lives, but for those who haven’t, here’s a quick orientation to the (very) low initial costs involved in getting into the hobby and enjoying these lovely fellows.

1. 14 inch glass tank (Lam Hong Aquarium at Ang Mo Kio) - $18
2. Hagen external filter (Sea View at Seletar) - $17
3. Critters (two Guppies, three Corys, two Gobys) - $7
4. 10 kg of Aquarium gravel (Aquastar at Yishun) - $10
5. 24 hour Timer (Cold Storage) - $12

Several items were recycled from the old tank, including the fluorescent lamp for lighting, water treatment, gravel stones, a cooling fan, with the plants taken from the larger living room tank. Our expenditure for the Sunday setup was just $65ish, and Ling now gets a pretty nice view on her table.:)

Of all the different species of Corydoras we’ve tried keeping in our two aquariums at home, we’ve had the most luck with the Leopard Corys. They’ve been terrifically robust, gregarious, and very social to the other inhabitants in the tank. These are actually pretty small critters, and the four we’ve got in our large living room aquarium each measure just under an inch.

We’ve been keeping our eye open to see if we can get new companions for these four from Sea View Aquarium for several weeks, but no luck. Until over the last weekend, we went by Lam Hong and saw the largest Corydoras yet in Singapore, and Sterbai Cories according to the species ! These babies were going for $6 (about four times more expensive than the normal ones), and they each measured more than 2.5 inches from head to fin! Sterbais look very much like Leopards, though closer examination of the pectoral fins will show a difference of colors.

I don’t think these large Cories were bred here in the local farms, since I’ve not seen them at the other aquariums here; my guess is that these are possibly the ones that have been caught in the wild. The very large specimens are commonly found in the rivers of Latin America, and while this huge fellow and the little ones are technically the same species, they’re certainly not from the same source.In any case, we picked up this fellow, alongside eight Neon Tetras to join the current shoal. You can get an idea of the comparative sizes in the picture above. As with other new critters we pick up, the bag floats in the tank for a while so that the water temperatures can equalize.

It’s pretty funny to see the big fellow swim around in the tank now. He’s so big he looks like he could gulp any one of our Neon Tetras. But he’s really a gentle giant; so much so that Ling is determined to name him “GG” for Gentle Giant. The other fellows in the tank aren’t intimidated by GG at all, even though he does tend to create quite a bit of water turbulence when he swims around.

Here’re more information on this species: here and here.

Ling had to work late on VD several evenings ago, so I got off the hook from having to plan for another madly expensive and exorbitant dinner as it’s often the case for days like these. We instead had dinner at home, with myself whipping up one her favorite fare: Pasta Carbonara pasta, and over an episode of The West Wing, a drama series that we enjoy watching together.

Valentine’s Day was in short a quiet and simple affair for the both of us. That said, we were saddened that not all of the four Lionheads Ling bought me as a year ago in the last VD made it past their first birthday.

The four little buggers had been surviving pretty robustly for most of the last 12 months; until a week ago for some reason part of the bacteria colony - an essential component of an aquarium cycle - died, causing the water conditions to suddenly and quickly deteriorate without either of our knowledge. Two of the fellows managed to survive long enough for us to discover the problem while the other two succumbed quickly.

We were fearing for the survivors too as they remained sick for several days. Fortunately, as of yesterday, both seemed to have fully recovered and are swimming abouts as before, even if they look just a tad sorrowful at missing two of their family.

Or so Ling complained the other evening. We’ve been incrementally adding inhabitants to the aquarium over the last week or so now. As these things go, additions of new critters need to be done slowly; adding too many at a go could easily overwhelm the nitrogen and ammonia waste cycle that’s still getting established in the aquarium.

The both of us prefer different critters too. The four Lionheads that Ling bought me on Valentine’s Day ten months ago are still hale and hearty. They’ve been moved to a different tank given their destructive habits on plants and that they’re also pretty messy critters. That said, they’ve also been the most interactive of all the critters we’ve had so far. After the Lionheads, Ling loves Cardinal tetras, and she’s been badgering me to buy a small school of them for our tank.

Me, on the other hand, prefer armoured catfishes, or Corydoras critters. These are bottom dwellers who spend much of their time swimming in the lower strats of a tank, although they occasionally will make a mad dash to the surface for a gulp of air. They’re lovely fellows: peaceful, and never greedy for food. They’re also some of the most gregarious fishes around: they’ll happily school with other Corydoras species. And while they tend to scavenge for food on their own, when they’re at rest, they’ll invariably seek out their own, and gather in a little circle like a catfish convention. And if one stares hard enough, these fellows may just blink at you even.:)

We’ve got quite a number of different Cory species now, and the ones pictured here are the most recent additions: two of the three Leopard Corys that were added yesterday afternoon. They’ve acclimatized to the existing inhabitants quite well, and within an hour were happily exploring the tank and swimming with their brethen.

By that, I meant the fishes.:)Ling has been remarking that the fishes in our tanks really do enjoy a good life. How’s that? Well, they get a nicely planted playground to swim around in, a wooden cave to hide in - the little Corydoras catfishes love to do this in their new home - they get to enjoy well-filtered water from an oversized filter, and most of all, enjoy cool air-conditioning courtesy of large piece of equipment in the living hall; a chiller.

For those of us who’re hobbyists, a chiller is an equipment that takes in water from the tank, cools it down in the same way an air-conditioning unit does, then passes it back to the tank. An internal thermostat monitors the water temperature, and switches on and off when necessary to keep the temperature constant throughout.

How is water temperature important? Well, plants typically survive best at lower temperatures than what Singapore weather is normally. Specifically, water plants could start wiltering if they were left at water of around 30 to 31 degrees. Depending on the fishes one keeps, those little critters could be at some discomfort too, though just slightly higher water temperatures are rarely fatal.

Not all aquarium keepers invest in this equipment though, and that could be due to several reasons. The power usage for the device can be high, and the device is… huge.:) In our case, the chiller is placed beside the cabinet, and is pretty much hidden by the sofa altogether, fortunately. Otherwise, the chiller with its two huge water hoses would had been quite an eye-sore.

In any case, the above wasn’t that expensive an initial investment for us. We got it fairly cheaply at $400 - a Hailea HC-300A for those who know of these things - and it’s reputed to be a fairly reliable machine for the price we paid. The long-term running cost is of some concern though, but we figured we could live with about an additional $10 of electrical use per month. After all, what price for the well-being of flora and fauna?