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Wednesday, January 31, 2007

Garlic is good for you!

So 007 left and the parasites are still in the tank. I've changed my strategy and have started feeding food soaked in garlic juice to the fishies. Fishies have responded very well and have regained all their coloration and skin texture within a day.

Nitrates are at a shockingly high level. thats probably cos of the high level of feeding for the sun corals. Ugh! knocked over some rocks. Sucha pain when that happens.

Saturday, January 27, 2007

The TREE in the deep blue SEA in my HDB!

Bleed through ur noses guys! behold this beauty! I call it the TREE in the deep blue SEA in my HDB! It even rhymes! I was the evil influence to get Belle into Sun corals, now she's the evil influence to get me into exotic colored sun corals! Dang!

Friday, January 26, 2007

Fish Society

007 chose to die another day but unfortunately, it was the next day. It's heart wrenching to lose a life like that. Initially I thought it showed signs of improvement after shifting it to the quarantine tub but as time went on, i guess it was ill beyond any remedy. 007 left for fish society 21 Jan 2007 and will always be remembered fondly as the one who kept my tank clean from diatom algae and the one who fought strongly for his life.

I once said that aquariums is a very therapeutic hobby. You're playing 'God', you're creating a 'world', you choose the life that you want to put it, you provide for it. You don't live in the aquarium so you're a 3rd person but its from this that you understand alot of perspectives that the fish do not. If you take it further and draw parallels to your life, there's alot that it actually reveals.

007 was a fighter. I could tell watching it swim around till its very last. Somehow nature put a survival instinct in its creation that all will fight to survive. Why do humans commit suicide? Why do people choose to take their lives just because they made a mistake and found it imposisble to live with that guilt there and then? Even a fish can die with dignity, swimming till it breathes its last. It just goes to show how weak humans can be.

Saturday, January 20, 2007

007

A name is a label for a person, thing, place etc. Often we choose symbolic and meaningful names that describe what we're naming. For example Chinatown is where the chinese community gathered and hence the name. But that's in the case of a place. What if you're naming a child? A child is often given a name at birth but hey, it's still has another 80 odd years to live, its too early to tell its character. How can the name be representative of the child then? I suggest that the name epitomizes all that the parent hopes for that cihld to be and the child grows into the name. I have a personal story for this, but that's out of the scope for this blog.

007 is a Kole Tang. The yellow-eyed kole tang has distinctive yellow rings around it eyes making them very striking in contrast with its dark blue/purple body. Hence the name from its 'Golden Eye' - 007.

I never liked putting medication into an aquarium. I've always advocated nature's way of curing diseases through the immune system. However this outbreak of parasites I judged it to be beyond what the natural rate of healing of the fish could handle. I'm into the 5th out of 10 doses now. 007 didn't take to it too well. I found it restless and not moving. Just this morning it went missing. I've scoured the tank but I couldn't find it. Mum said she saw it lying dead but its just wierd that the body is gone. I understand fully how the loved ones of tragic catastrophies feel. What sucks is not the news that your loved one died. Yes that sucks but at least its an end and you can move on. What's worse is that there's no news. You have no idea of whether that someone is alive, struggling out there somewhere. That was the case for 007 and I was the restless the entire day.

007 went missing for almost 12hours. I did a scan on the room floor, perhaps it jumped but no it didn't. i tried probing under the rocks but no 007. I gave up. Hope was dimming. Then in the evening I saw it ALIVE! I netted it up, set up an immediate quarantine facility and hopefully it will pull through and get healthy again.

What's this gotta do with the name? Loera's witty suggestion that 007's gonna 'die another day'. well there, uncanny but true. Let's just pray that day is not tomorrow.

Friday, January 19, 2007

White Spots

Alright, major white spots outbreak. Medication has been dosed. In these dire times, I can only ask for everyone to keep the deep blue sea in my HDB and all its inhabitants in their prayers.

Wednesday, January 17, 2007

Sun Shades!

Aquarium was originally built on an open concept but after these couple of months, it seems that the light is way to bright and glaring for viewing pleasure so today I embarked on a project to build a hood out of polyfoam plastic boards.
Here's the final product. Looks like something out the carpenter's workshop and it only cost me $9 bucks. Actually less but i over estimated the material needed. Held it all together with some silicon left over from previous projects and lets see how it works out. Its alot softer on the eyes now.

Not been updating for a while. Last saturday bro Patrick from the reefclub gave me a super sun, a prata and many zoa colonies. Sad to say the sun was in real bad condition and I had to let it go. On the bright side, the rest are doing perfectly fine. Prata is the disc shaped coral smack in the middle of the tank and the zoas are scattered here and there.
Some causalties happened since. one mushroom was half devoured mysteriously. Mandarin jumped for a second time. 1 tube worm is missing. Need to be more faithful in the husbandry of the aquarium.

Did some online shopping and i'm gonna get a PH monitor! hopefully that will help give more accurate and timely indications of water parameters. And oh for the videos, i've uploaded them on youtube but the resolution was so poor it didn't really matter if you watched it or not.

Friday, January 12, 2007

Side View


Thought this was a pretty interesting view from the side. Never saw the clam so vibrant before. YouTube is down, I've just made a couple of videos. Really exciting ones but its lil amatuerish. YouTube get moving! I wanna upload vids!

Wednesday, January 10, 2007

Baby Suns!


Baby sun corals! one big colony and now there are 4 (if you look close enough) other small conlonies growing on what was once a sun coral but now its just the dead skeleton. Sometimes I have this feeling. Did i see them before? or are they new growth.

Tuesday, January 09, 2007

The Deep Blue Sea

The deep blue sea has been running for 78days now. 2 casualties so far. I lost a sexy shrimp while doing a very disruptive and extensive water change and re-scaping of the tank. My fault entirely. I lost a mandarin goby who jumped out the next day after it was introduced. It's unlikely for mandarins to be active in the water column and what more jump out so I consider that a freak accident. Other than that, i'm proud to report that everything is doing well. Infact things are growing and multiplying!
Comparing the aquarium with the first few initial shots, I'd say its come a long way. The floor is still a little messy with stray rocks I've yet to decide a final location for. Coralline algae growth has been significant and all the rocks look pretty much purple and alive.

Here's the deep blue sea from another angle. Let's see if you can find the following:
1. Sailfin Tang a.k.a San Francisco
2. Clown Fish a.k.a Mr. & Ms. Mo
3. Spotted Mandarin Goby a.k.a Tooshie Pox
4. Kole Tang a.k.a 007 (Double Oh Seven)
Explain the names another time

Sunday, January 07, 2007

Round the Tank in um... 1 day?

Yesterday while performing a water change, the feather star somehow decided it got tired of its location and crawled round the tank searching for a better spot. It went high and low and even after a couple of hours, it was still seen moving to other spots. Finally i woke up this morning, it was back in its original spot. so yes, the feather star went on a round the tank trip. I hope its happy in its spot now.

Wednesday, January 03, 2007

Quick! We need a DOCTOR!

Accidentaly I spiked the carbonate hardness of the water because I read its value wrongly. I guess that caused a little irritation to the fishies. Mr. and Ms. Mo have been swimming in and out and through the hammer coral taking it as a surrogate host, probably to ease their skin irritation. White spots on other fishies. Things should get better.

More Friends!



Added quite a number of stuff into the tank recently but have just been to busy to update. Yellow polyps and they came for free! Very generous gesture courtesy of the Golden Octopus! I was out coral shopping and what caught my eye was these small polyps growing wild on the sand bed. Asked Mr. Shan if i could buy them and he said, i'll give 'em to you. Looking for great corals, go to the Golden Octopus!



Zoas! I forgot the full name but I bought a bunch of them off Simon another member on the reefclub forum. Had real trouble finding a place to house this bunch cos it wasn't attached to a rock to weight it down. floating all around in the current.



And more zoas, this time in one big block. Much easier to position to them. I was very surprised that these zoas adapted really well and opened up the very same day I introduced them into the tank. One more colony, a little too tiny and I'm very disappointed in the color rendering of this camera. Ugh!



Star a tank? yes the red feather star. Got this poisonous intimidating looking creep out in some coral farm located in some far off place. I had no idea what it was, it just looked exotic and all the man told me was that star ate dirty things. Hilarious! Its a feather star and it feeds on plankton.



The final picture, more mushrooms. This pair courtesy of belle again. i love mushrooms. I have so many now. there are some more i've not taken pictures of them. Came in a big rock, so there was no place to house them so I hack the rock to bits.

Cauliflower is recovering!


'Cauliflowers' are soft corals meaning they do not have a calcareous skeleton. It's just one soft coral polyp attached to a rock. The cauliflowers have only been fairing fine since they got into the tank. They usually thrive in dark areas and are often found hanging upside down in caves. The right side of the picture shows the cauliflowers when they first came into the tank. One of the polyps has its tiny tentacles extended giving it a hairy appearance whereas the other is fully contracted and looks smooth. That smooth polyp has refused to extend its tentacles until recently. On the left, that is a recent shot. Not very sharp, but you can compare how much the polyps have gotten better and grown. That's great news for the deep blue sea!