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The subject line pretty much says it all. I've written almost nothing in the past few days, after a really good start on the month of March. I blame my class and my friends. But, the truth is I've been kind of out of it for the past couple of days. (Don't tell Cap, but I also haven't been to the gym in over two weeks.)
Not writing and not excercising makes me weird. Not in the fun "oh, hey, look at that crazy chick snowboarding down Summit Avenue" kind of weird, but the grumpy, snarly, weepy, "am I PMSing?" kind of weird.
But, in exciting news, I nearly killed Joe and Fergus our goldfish on Monday. I was going through my usual cleaning routine -- I'd just put in a new filter full of activated carbon, when I go to dump out the waste water in the downstairs bathroom sink. I come out and, lo, the entire tank is BLACK with charcoal. I can't even SEE the fish it's so black. The only thing I can figure is that I must have torn a hole in the filter bag. Whatever caused it, I quickly pulled the broken bag out, and started siphoning off water. Luckily, I hadn't filled the tank up with new water yet, so it was a half capactiy (about 15 gallons.) After taking out what I could without leaving the fish gasping at the bottom, I filled it up.
It was still pretty black, so I half-emptied and filled it again.
That seemed to do the trick at least, but I watched them carefully over the next few days. As my friend Sean M. Murphy pointed out, the worst damage I probably inflicted was killing off a large percentage of the bacteria with all that activated carbon. No surprise, yesterday afternoon I noticed a moderate white cloudiness -- a bacterial bloom -- no doubt the beneficial bacterial trying to regain equillibrium.
Today I changed South Africa's tank, Johnny Giant-Girl's (and I added a bubbler), and Bob[2] and Kenya's. Bob and Kenya still have two GIGANTIC (okay, big for them, anyway,) shrimp living there. Sean and I noticed them last night. But, while we we showing off the shrimp to Shawn (who was thinking, no doubt, "uh, cool... BUGS,") she pointed out the gross algea growing on the faux Roman ruin. I took that feature out today and cleaned the beejesus out of it. I only spoted one of the two shrimp, but those guys are see-through so I suspect the other one just stayed in hiding.
I'd be cool if they were a mating pair. I mean, I know there was a lot of heartache and trauma with the last set of aquatic arthropod parents, but... well, I'm fascinated by the process, what can I say?
Oh, and Johnny/Giant Girl the Wonder Betta is a bonafide YouTube star. Last time I went to YouTube, I noticed he had 900+ hits. I realize that in the world of YouTube this isn't really a sensation, but give that it's a dull little video of me talking to my fish, I think it's kind of cool.
Not writing and not excercising makes me weird. Not in the fun "oh, hey, look at that crazy chick snowboarding down Summit Avenue" kind of weird, but the grumpy, snarly, weepy, "am I PMSing?" kind of weird.
But, in exciting news, I nearly killed Joe and Fergus our goldfish on Monday. I was going through my usual cleaning routine -- I'd just put in a new filter full of activated carbon, when I go to dump out the waste water in the downstairs bathroom sink. I come out and, lo, the entire tank is BLACK with charcoal. I can't even SEE the fish it's so black. The only thing I can figure is that I must have torn a hole in the filter bag. Whatever caused it, I quickly pulled the broken bag out, and started siphoning off water. Luckily, I hadn't filled the tank up with new water yet, so it was a half capactiy (about 15 gallons.) After taking out what I could without leaving the fish gasping at the bottom, I filled it up.
It was still pretty black, so I half-emptied and filled it again.
That seemed to do the trick at least, but I watched them carefully over the next few days. As my friend Sean M. Murphy pointed out, the worst damage I probably inflicted was killing off a large percentage of the bacteria with all that activated carbon. No surprise, yesterday afternoon I noticed a moderate white cloudiness -- a bacterial bloom -- no doubt the beneficial bacterial trying to regain equillibrium.
Today I changed South Africa's tank, Johnny Giant-Girl's (and I added a bubbler), and Bob[2] and Kenya's. Bob and Kenya still have two GIGANTIC (okay, big for them, anyway,) shrimp living there. Sean and I noticed them last night. But, while we we showing off the shrimp to Shawn (who was thinking, no doubt, "uh, cool... BUGS,") she pointed out the gross algea growing on the faux Roman ruin. I took that feature out today and cleaned the beejesus out of it. I only spoted one of the two shrimp, but those guys are see-through so I suspect the other one just stayed in hiding.
I'd be cool if they were a mating pair. I mean, I know there was a lot of heartache and trauma with the last set of aquatic arthropod parents, but... well, I'm fascinated by the process, what can I say?
Oh, and Johnny/Giant Girl the Wonder Betta is a bonafide YouTube star. Last time I went to YouTube, I noticed he had 900+ hits. I realize that in the world of YouTube this isn't really a sensation, but give that it's a dull little video of me talking to my fish, I think it's kind of cool.