Lost projects

This blog being one of them.

Anyways, Ive been in Salado for a while now, and I havnt logged anything except a few chicken stories.

Update:  Thelma had a broken back, we put her down, the vet thinks she was hit by a hawk, but I have a new barred-rock, her name is La Grange.  Chuck the Duck was killed by a dog that got loose a couple of miles away.

I'm going to try to update this again....so here goes!

Quack

A duck in my bathtub!

Unsure

Thelma is sick, I don't know what wrong, her personality is completely intact.  She makes noise constantly, like she always has, but now she is walking around like she is drunk.  Four days on antibiotics  and in her own apartment( ie dog kennel with her own nest box and food and water dish) and she still isnt any better.  I worry, she isn't getting any worse, but I worry.  maybe I should let her free and just build a ramp into the coop, see if she can keep going,  give her some dignity. 

Chickens III

Yes, my life is all chickens right now.  I wanted more eggs a day, so logically, Get more chickens right?

I added four more to my flock, and now get fewer eggs....sigh.

Chickens II

I get two eggs a day right now with two laying hens and one about to start, they have deep orange yolks and taste delightful. I would encorage everyone who is able to grow there own eggs.
Red, the production red hen lays the darker egg, Henny Penny (I have no idea what she is, maybe a sex link) lays the pinkish one to the left, and the white one is store bought to show you the contrast.
Henny laid a double yoker last month, a monster of an egg.
This guy was abandoned by a bad neighbor, he survived the 8 degree nights we had this winter and was mean as hell. I sold him on craigslist because he was attacking everyone who came near him and crowed at all hours of the day and night. How he and Red came to live here is a strange story that still gives me nightmares, I'm glad its over, maybe some day Ill reminisce.

Chickens

Failures and triumphs have happened in the last year, Ive moved twice and can have chickens. Coop building was breeze and cost me all over 6 bucks in hinges as I scavenged everything else.


Simple design, and the chickens seem to like it. Its been holding strong since october of 2010.

And this is Sweet Pea, my newest and house trained chicken, not so much potty trained as in trained to want to roost in the house rather then in the coop, my fault it was cold this winter.

Fun Web Site

The Monterey Bay Aquarium has a wonderful website. Its well laid out, has beautiful pictures, and even better information.

The animal guide was caught my attention of course. Check it out for yourself!

Tools of the Trade

I wanted to show you some of my favorite tools for working on the tanks and around the house. Everyone should know how to use a sewing a machine or at very least a needle and thread. I repair clothes, make simple toys for the ferret and modify bags and carbon pillows with mine.

Sewing these things by hand is a pain but well worth the effort if your like me and can only find 55 gal carbon pillows but have a 10 gal tank. Sew a double line down the center, being very careful to not hit any of the resin pieces with the needle, with a very small tight stitch. Make sure its far apart enough to cut down the center, leaving enough seam overhang to prevent the stitches from tearing out.



Don't forget to save the bag(or can if its the old packaging) and keep the unused half sealed up because it will absorb toxins from the air as well as water. As a disclaimer, bio-zorb says that cutting or modifying the bag in any way is a big no-no.


Pipettes and turkey basters are wonderful, I had read about other people using them but didn't buy one until after starting the salt water tank, should have starting using them years ago. Bamboo dowls have been on my must have list for many years. You can use them like chopsticks to move things around the tanks, poke holes in bags, scrape off undesirable algae, apply glue and silicon....and a myriad of other things. Pictured is my main piece of tubing for doing water changes, but I also use a short piece at times and smaller diameters for acclimating.

Jan Saltwater Update and Additions

I'm currently battling green hair algae and cyano-bacteria, aka red-slime algae. After reducing my feedings by half, blowing the cyano off with a pipette twice daily, and increasing my water changes, the cyano problem has improved, but the hair algae is trying to take over. I've decided to take drastic action and purchase a sea hare to consume it. I'm hoping that by combining this with the twice weekly water changes I can rid the tank of algae and export the nutrients at the same time.

Things are starting to fill in nicely but I'm still not happy with the aquascaping, it just seems to bland. Click through for a larger picture.




Some new additions that I'm very happy with:

The radioactive dragon eye zoanthids I aquired a few months ago are doing well and have doubled in number and size. With out and with flash.



Its taken a lot of research, but I've finally decided on an ID for these anemones I bought two weeks ago, Rock flower anemones, Epicystis crucifer.



With the anemones I brought home this porcelain anemone crab, I just couldn't resist because he was so cute. Of course he flat out refuses to hang out with the anemones, probably just to spite me. I was fortunate enough to catch him hanging out next to the fromia star that has been hiding for the last few months. When I put the fromia in the tank he was near death with only three legs and most of his body cavity disintegrated, he has healed nicely and has begun to regrow his missing body parts.


These purple zoanthids have been a pain in my side since they were given to me by a friend. First, every appointment I made to pick them up had to be canceled because of work drama. Then, they refused to stay attached to there ceramic plug, taking half a bottle of superglue gel to stay in place. I am happy with there growth and size though, even though my lighting is not strong enough to sustain there deep purple coloration. In two weeks their skirts have turned distinctly brown.



After several months this florida ricordia still hasn't attached to anything so I took matters into my own hands. It formed two mouths soon after adding it to the tank and I'm hoping that rubber banding it in the middle will help it split faster also.

My El Fab Mod

It came out great. My bulb seriously needs to be changed, and as the cost is beyond me at this point, I just added one of my t5 reptile lights which conveniently fits over my filter as well.
Top down with the light removed. I decided to make the two chambers a bit more equal then what El Fab had his since I use Bio-Zorb rezen pillows and wanted room for them to fit.
With the filter floss(ahem...*cough*...quilting batting) removed, below it is my bio-zorb with some rubble mixed in.

You can see how the organic matter is building nicely.

I love this thing.

Salt water, Dec Update

A number of fortunate circumstances lead to me upgrading the saltwater tank last month, overall I'm happy with the results.

My birthday rolled around and allowed me to buy and Aquaclear 70 so I could mod it in to a refugium. A bag of black sand went on clearance at work the week before, which I saw as a sign from the heavens that this tank was ment to be a 10 gallon. The other issue was one of light, I needed to raise the tank so it would be closer to the light, so since I needed to empty it anyway, might as well up the size.

The Aqua Clear 70:
The AquaClear was by far already my favorite filter, just for its pure versatility and toughness. I've run many of these dry for hours at a time (unintentionally) and they keep on kickin'. My enthusiasm for the brand only increased when I found this mod for a nano-tank refugium on Nano-reef.com.

El Fab's Simple Guide to Pico Tanks

The link is halfway through the article at the AquaClear mod instructions. The gist of it is: Shorten the intake tube, reduce the flow by removing the tab, dissect the media basket and use the parts to make chambers and add a light for cheato.

Something fuzzy for a change

The newest addition to our family, Nibblit:


We adopted her about two months ago and she has been a delight. Her hobbies include spilling water glasses and playing whack-a-mole with the dog.

Playing Catch up

So much to post, I don't know why time flies, but it does....
I acquired a crested gecko some time ago, and never took pictures

Introducing Betty Boop, a tiger striped dalmatian that someone didn't want anymore:



She lives in the large terrarium with the two red-eye and two big-eye tree frogs, which hasbeen replanted and need to be photographed as well.

YCG

I realized that I havn't posted a memorial for my little yellow fish....he disappeared about a week after relocating the tank....so sad, but you know, I saw another at the work the other day....

hmmm...

sorry little yellow fish, you were my favorite, you will be missed

Here is what the new setup looks like....I got ride of the homemade stand, and found this 55 gal stand on clearance. Much homier now.
My friend gave me this still as of yet unkown coral frag...I'll let you know when I identify it.
and if you look real close to the left of the ricordia yuma, you can see its little baby, I finally had a coral split...horay.

(Bigger pic on the click through)
The green thing in the bottom right corner is the skeleton of the bubble coral that finally bit the dust. I cant get a good shot of it but I aquired a very small piece of green star polyp thats just to tiny to see.

I went ahead and got some cheato in anticipation of refuge build I would like to do.

Just found the camera....

I don't think I'll ever catch up...there have been a lot of additions to the tanks....we'll see what we can do about it.

Bubble coral imminent failure

The bubble coral isn't doing very well....it makes me sad. The bubbles haven't been out for about 5 days now and there is algae growing on the skeleton....sad sad sad.

I had to walk next door to hasting to look something up on the bubble coral. I have not been able to find any specific information online or at work. But luckily they had a book on marine inverts which stated that the bubble coral will retract its bubbles only when it is being poisoned by poor water quality or other corals...so I'm trying to fix that now.

Saltwater success

I'm way behind on updates on this one, there are lots of new additions and a rearrange.
First I got a great deal in June, two finger leather frags for just under 20 bucks, one has attached well and the other is taking its sweet time. But the polyps are extending so I hopefully they are doing ok.


The only concern was that in such a small tank, leathers have a tendency to poison other corals when they shed there waxy coating. They did this soon after i put them in and siphoned it off just in case, but by then I had already added the bio-zorb and was counting on it to do the trick.

About a month ago I added this guy, i had been wanting a peppermint shrimp and about the time I was ready to add something else he appeared at work so of course I snatched him up.


I decided to do a re-arrange when the bubble coral came in on a shipment to see if I could get it to fit, I actually researched it first unlike the finger leather coral. Shame on me.

And here is some random pics that came out nice.