thunkgeek.com

I bought a used Xbox last September to use as a media center and game console. Since then I’ve bought a few used games to go along with it, including a couple for my wife. She was hesitant to let me get the console because she worried it would monopolize my time. It has’t so far… I’m not a hardcore gamer and I doubt I ever will be, especially since I can only afford to buy used consoles and games three to five years after they were originally released. However, I have struggled to find a title that Erica really wanted to play. I picked up a copy of one of the Harry Potter games because she is pretty into the Potter thing. She played for a few minutes when I first brought it home, but I don’t think she’s done anything with it since. She’ll watch me play Burnout Revenge and ocassionally race against me, but she’s not really into that either. Frustrating.

Well, score one for the home team, because I have finally found her gaming niche. Last week I picked up a copy of DDR Ultramix and a dance mat for her. She had seen the game in arcades and thought it looked kinda fun, so I started looking for a cheapish way to let her play at home. She was a dancer up through high school, and taught dance for two years at a middle school, and even though playing DDR probably isn’t really “dancing” I thought she would enjoy it. She was excited to open the big box and when she saw what it was she wanted to plug it in and try it out. Since then she has spent a few minutes playing almost every day and is getting pretty darn good at it. I’ve finally found a game that she will actually put into the Xbox and play all by herself. Woohoo!! A gamer is born.

I am still lusting after a Maxxum 7D, and it looks like maybe I will be getting one eventually. Konica Minolta today announced several new products and a price reduction on the 7D. If it keeps coming down this way I will eventually be able to snag one. Of course then they’ll introduce a 9D and I’ll want that.

Here’s what doesn’t jive for me though. The newly announced Maxxum 5D has a 6.1 megapixel sensor, just like the 7D. The Dimage X1, a consumer compact digital camera, on the other hand, sports the same anti-shake tech, but an 8 megapixel sensor. I don’t get it. Why put the larger sensor in the cheaper, consumer camera? From what I understand, their line on the sensor in the dSLRs is that it is plenty big enough to get good results, but why not throw in that extra resolution if you’ve got it, especially since everyone else is? Maybe there is some technical reason that would make it cost prohibitive, like the sensor in the Dimage series is from a different manufacturer and is a different physical size so they can’t just stick it in the Maxxums. I still want one of the dSLRs so I can make use of some of my Maxxum line accessories, I just don’t quite get it.

I’ve started gradually lowering the temp in the tank and leaving the lights on again now that it has been two weeks since the ich showed up. It’s been more than a week since I stopped seeing spots on the fish so with a little luck we should be in good shape now.

After a week with the lights out, the temperature at 85 degrees and about 2 tsp/gallon of salt in the water, I am no longer seeing any white spots on my neons. I never saw anything on the danios or catfish. According to this article I am supposed to continue treatment the same way for another week, so by next monday all should be well.

On another note, we’ve been thinking about getting a couple more fish. I’ve held off a bit because I wanted to be sure our tank wasn’t developing and “new tank syndrome” related problems. It’s been almost a month and a half now, so I think we should be in the clear. Once the white spot stuff is completely eradicated I think we’ll look into getting a couple of gouramis. The pet store had powder blues and some sunsets last time I was there and I think both would look nice in the tank. They’re slightly larger fish so it’ll be easier to see that there is actually something in the tank without pressing your nose right up against the glass!

I’d also like to put some sort of background on the tank. I think this afternoon on the way home I’ll pick up some black poster board and see how that looks. Some people paint the back glass of their tanks, but that seems a bit too permanent at this point. The poster will let us try out different colors and see what we like best, then maybe later I’ll try paint.

It was inevitable, probably. The fish have White Spot, or Ich, a parasitic disease that is fairly common. I’ve started treatment by increasing the water temperature and adding salt to the tank. The procedure is to keep that up for about two weeks and the parasites should be completely gone.

It’s been more than three weeks since the fish went in the tank, and they are all still alive and seem to be well. I’ve done weekly 25% water changes and the waste chemicals in the tank have stayed pretty steady right around 0ppm, so I think we are in good shape.

I’ve been trying to take some pictures of the little guys, but they don’t like to hold still and smile for the camera. My little P&S digital camera is not really up to the task either. It has no way to control external flashes, so it’s next to impossible to get enough light into the tank to get a decent picture. The flash built into the camera provides enough light, but washes out the colors in the tank. Maybe I’ll be able to come up with a diffuser or reflector setup to help with that. What I’d really like is to be able to fire my two big strobes straight down into the tank from the top. I think that would give enough light to get some good pics. I’ll keep playing with that, but for now it is more fuel on the fire to get a dSLR that will enable me to do a little more of the photography that I am used to being able to do. Anyway, below is what I feel is probably the best of the bunch. The picture was taken at ISO 800 and showed a lot of graininess and some nasty noise. I used a smart blur in photoshop to obtain the effect below and then removed the noise that was still noticeable with the healing tool.

The fish are now in. We’re the proud owners of 10 neon tetras, 3 zebra danios and 3 otocinclus catfish. They all went into the tank today and the tank is now covered on two sides with Christmas wrapping paper so the kids can unwrap it and discover their fish tomorrow.

I haven’t posted an update about the fishless cycle in a while, so I’ll do that now. I finally started getting nitrite readings about a week and a half ago. They steadily climbed, then I started to get a little nitrate. I kept adding about a milliliter of my ammonia solution each day and things seemed to progress well. I also finally found a local(ish) store that sells Marineland Labs “Bio-Spira,” which is the only cycling product that people seem to recommend. Since the fishless cycle was not really complete (meaning zero ammonia and zero nitrite) before I put the fish in I added some bio-spira last night after changing about 60% of the water to remove the built up nitrates. That should ensure that there is enough bacteria in the tank to convert the fish waste to nitrite and then nitrate. I’ll monitor the levels over the next few days and do frequent partial water changes as needed.

It’s awfully exciting to finally have the fish in the tank, though the danios are the only ones brave enough to swim around much so far. The neons are all hiding in the back at the bottom of the tank and the otocinclus are hiding among the plants. Hopefully they’ll all warm up to their new home and become a bit more active by the time the kids see them tomorrow.

After consulting with an online forum on fishkeeping, it seems I was mistaken to follow to the letter the directions on fishless cycling. I’ve now made a major water change in order to bring the ammonia level in the tank down to between 1 and 4 ppm. The group opinion on the forum was that I wasn’t seeing any bacterial activity because there was way too much ammonia in the tank. So, for anybody who happens upon this and is going to do something similar, you can avoid the pitfall I was trapped in for a week by initially adding ammonia to bring the titer to between 3 and 5 ppm, then add no more ammonia until you start to see the ammonia level drop and the nitrite rise. My ammonia level was off the charts for a week because I kept adding ammonia. I don’t know how much I ended up with in the tank, but it was a lot, it took almost a complete water change, (done in several steps over almost 24 hours) to get it down to a manageable level. I’ve also added a bit more seed material from my neighbors tanks today, so hopefully I should be in good shape.

Okay, so we’re a week into our fishless cycle, according (mostly) to the instructions in Chris Cow’s article. I added ammonia to the tank to get it to ~5ppm on the first day. It took about 15ml of my ammonia from Walmart. I added the same the second day, and of course the measurement was through the roof. I decided to cut back to just 5ml per day so it wouldn’t get out of control. So, I’ve added 5ml each day since the second. Here’re the measurements so far:

So, as is plainly obvious, nothing is really happening yet. I added some gravel from an established tank yesterday, and assumed (perhaps mistakenly) that I would see some nitrite pretty quick, but I haven’t. So, I’ll keep following the directions for a few more days before I begin to panic that we won’t be ready for fish by Christmas.

So we got our plants, etc., yesterday and I added them to the tank. Several of the plants came with a bonus plant along with the one I ordered so there are more plants in the tank than I was planning on. It’s a good thing because it would have looked a bit bare…. And I thought I ordered too many.

I also took an initial ammonia reading of between 0 and 0.25 ppm, then added 10 ml of ammonia solution to the tank. I’ll let that sit for about 30 mins then take another reading.

The pH reading was a bit high… 7.4ish, so I’ll have to get something in there to lower that a bit in the next day or two. I am surprised our tap water is so acidic.

Here’s what the tank looks like now that the plants are in: