jwcarlson

Interesting regarding the nitrate connection possibility. My discus tank is usually <5 with the daily 90% changes. Plus some pothos and philodendron just in case any nitrate sneaks by the water changes. 😄

I got a really long siphon so that my hands/arms aren't in the tank too much. I do discus water every night, but (other than starting the siphon) my hands/arms stay pretty dry. On full wipe down and filter squeeze water changes every week for wipe and every month or so for filter squeezes - I get more wet. I wash with dish soap after doing WCs. Have gotten some arm itchiness in the past, but none of note.

Kind of depends on your personal tastes, I'd say. King is obviously mostly "horror" though typically not extremely gory. Certainly "adult" themes with words I don't necessarily want to plop on here. I particularly like his characters as they are usually quite well developed. I am not old enough to have lived through the life of "Richard Bachman", but I think they are pretty good books as a rule (though I have not read them all, by any means). I like Thinner, The Long Walk, Running Man, and Road Work. The Long Walk is the best in that batch IMO. And they're all relatively short. If you like a good exploration of grief - Pet Sematary. This book is usually dislike by a lot of people, but I thought Lisey's Story was a pretty good book. Coming of age - The Talisman is solid and Later is also quite good. King does a pretty good job of writing as a younger person in spite of not having been particularly young for about half a century. Different Seasons is four short (?) stories that give quite a bit of flavor. Shawshank Redemption is among them. If you like westerns, I think The Gunslinger is a good book. It is the first (and most say the weakest, though I don't think I agree) of his The Dark Tower series. More recently published stuff - The Institute and Elevation (more of a short story or maybe novella) are pretty good. Elevation isn't particularly highly rated, but like Lisey's Story... it isn't quite typical King and so I think that might turn off some of the Constant Readers. I don't mind rolling with the punches and can appreciate seeing some range. If you'd like to just hear more about his writing technique and/or style his On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft is pretty entertaining and personal. Hitman with a conscience? Billy Summers is your book. All that said, if Misery wasn't for you then maybe King just isn't for you. I'd be curious to know if there's a lot of King fans who hated Misery, but still liked most all of his other stuff. Some of the shorter stuff won't be a huge time investment if you still find it not to your liking. If horror and psychological elements aren't your jam, then you're not likely to enjoy much of King's writing. His plots can be meandering and not particularly well paced, but I am a character reader first and foremost. I really think King could write a novel about someone watching paint dry and make it incredible. Edited to add: I might be important to note that pretty much all King's books are interconnected in some way or another. The Dark Tower is kind that underlying connective tissue, but in almost all cases - you don't need to have read any other books to get the vast majority "out" of any standalone. Additionally - The Eyes of the Dragon (discussed a bit ago by a few of us) is a great King novel that's probably well connected to his other works, but a very good standalone story. King has narrated a decent number of his own books (including On Writing). I greatly enjoy his narrations. If you happen to have a Scribd subscription or want to sign up for a free trial, you could listen to the vast majority of his collection on that platform. I think I pay $10-12 per month and probably listen to about that 8+ books each month while working, keeping bees, walking dogs, water changes, etc. I grew up reading King at a pretty young age, including The Dark Tower in my early teens - the final two books were published the year I graduated HS or perhaps the year after.

Vinland Saga book one was a quick read and quite good. Started reading T. Kingfisher's Nettle & Bone:

Finished We Hunt the Flame - it was... Ok. The Eyes of the Dragon - finished as well, fantastic story for sure. Thanks for the recommendation. Started Vinland Saga - my first manga ever.

Thankee-sai.

One thing I never get tired of is the soft letdowns I have when King straight-up tells you what is going to happen, but then somehow continues to draw you into and through the narrative. There's not much of anything I have disliked at this point. I snuck off to do a quick honey bee task this evening just so I could keep listening for a little longer and then a little longer while doing the discus nightly water change after that.

@Darktower805 Not finished yet, but am loving The Eyes of the Dragon, King seems purpose built to tell stories I love to hear. I am never tired of King. Also, the narrator is fantastic. Flagg's voice!

I've got to say... this was a big miss for me. In fact, I'm not even done listening to it yet. I won't continue the series for a number of reasons. I can get behind quite a bit of Young Adult, this this is a hard pass. Curious what you think when you get done with it. 🙂 Even as I'm typing this the story is making me dislike it more! haha I do like the narrator, though. I should finish We Hunt the Flame tonight or tomorrow - I'm not loving that one, but it's OK. Part of my dislike for Caraval might be the fact that I'm reading another YA story with 'romance' in WHtF. Back to big kid books after this. Trying to decide if I'm going to read The Hod King (The Books of Babel #3) or Upgrade (released a couple days ago by Blake Crouch) next. Not sure when I will return to WoT for #5. Putting a LOT of books between 4 and 5 for sure, hoping that helps me enjoy it a little more.

I have not. One thing that I always find remarkable is how many Stephen King books there are that I have never even heard of. 😄 I'll be listening to it soon, though. All of King's books are linked back to The Tower in some way or another. Even this Gwendy's Button Box series has Tet Corp and the Tower tied in. 🙂

Yep, I've already "read" four books in the last week, but haven't opened a single one of them. I audiobook books that I want the flavor of, but am otherwise not really that excited about. I have a Scribd subscription, so I can burn through a ton of them. Stephen King is my favorite author and they have a ton of his books on there. If there's one that really gets me listening then I mentally mark it for a possible physical re-read at some point. But for some series that I want to know how they end, I might read the first book or two, but not be in love with it... then I'll listen to the rest of it. I also like audiobook re-reads. When I already know the story it's easier to listen to and get more out of it. I audiobook daily and physical read daily - always have two books going, though one is being read to me. 🙃

I'm going to listen to this after I finish the Gwendy's Button Box series in audiobook (which will happen today).

For such a small tank you can easily change 50% of water per day (or even twice a day) for quite some time before it becomes a major pain. Additionally, Fritz Zyme 7 does a pretty good job of jump starting cycles (in my experience). It won't prevent the nitrite spike, but the bacteria eating ammonia colonizes pretty quick comparatively. I did a fish-in cycle with my discus tank in February, changing 55 gallons in the 75 gallon tank every night (with a big bottle of Fritz Zyme at the beginning). Using Prime to dechlorinate (and maybe help with whatever might still be in the water). Changing water will slow the cycle down, but it will eventually cycle. The discus tank took about 5-6 weeks to totally cycle, I think. No noticeable problems with the fish (related to cycling), they grew 1/2" a month during that time. Edit to add that I also did the recommended dose of Seachem Stability after every water change on the discus tank. This method was suggested by some old-timey discus keepers and it worked really well. Big daily changes + Prime + Stability. Did the same with a 10 gallon at the end of last year (but didn't use Stability). The 10 gallon took about two weeks or so. In a pinch, the Tetra starting bacteria also seems to do pretty well on the 10 gallon. It might at least get you over the ammonia hump. 50% water change in a 10 gallon tank takes almost no time, I just set up a bucket next to the tank and filled it after the change. Used a spare heater to heat it and an air stone to offgas my CO2 and age the water (mine goes from a pH of 7 to 8.2 or 8.3 when aged).

Does duckweed have another state? 🤣

It's not a buffalo problem, it's a people problem. 😉 Meaning Yellowstone isn't a petting zoo. The last one that happened... yesterday, I think? The people were within 10 feet of a wild animal that weighs almost as much as their car. And the buffalo are EVERYWHERE out there, or at least they were when we were out there. Just imagine if we had a free-range dinosaur park. 🤣

I'm glad you took my post the way it was intended, thank you! 🙂 Hopefully you have many years of rose-tinged glasses moments together, it's good to dream a little. Just yesterday I saw advertisement for a small cabin along the Mississippi River with a little dock and a bit of land, would be a cool place to own. I sent the listing to my wife and she immediately spun into "we need to buy it" mode. She even called the realtor, but it is pending closing now. Last piece of advice: If you end up in Yellowstone, don't approach the buffalo. Apparently that needs to be said as they're currently averaging about one buffalo goring per day recently in a park that's "closed" (I thought?)!

What does The Silmarillion have you doing? I read it some time ago and then within the last year listened to the audio book. Someone reading it to me was much more enjoyable because it's easier to ignore, maybe. 😄

My wife and I have been married for 13 years, our wedding was medium-ish. Low cost, no major frills. Local event in my wife's hometown about a two hour drive from where I grew up. Our best friends got married a couple of years after us, by best friends I mean we were having dinner with them multiple times per week and hanging out any weekends my wife and I weren't visiting our family. They did a destination wedding in the Virgin Islands and we flat out told them we weren't going. They were accepting about it. They did a small ceremony locally and then a "full size" reception locally and my wife and I did a lot of helping for that event and we were in attendance. We eventually grew apart after a couple more years, kids, and us moving. But there wasn't any ill feelings either way, so far as I know. I'll try to say this tactfully, understand that I do not mean anything mean or personal by it. Just my opinion. If I were going to have a destination wedding, I wouldn't specifically invite anyone. I would simply tell them "we're getting married in Yellowstone" and kind of let them drive the discussion about their attendance after that. I'd have whatever normal ceremony locally and then do the destination thing as a couple with anyone that cared to be in attendance. Going to our friends wedding would have cost us roughly what our own personal wedding had cost. I think it's entirely unreasonable to go to anyone with the expectation that they're going to schedule off work, spend a bunch of money, and eat up some of their time off. As you said, you guys are young and presumably your future brother-in-law is also relatively young... it can be very tough to participate in these kind of things while also paying off student loans, driving a junk car to save money, etc. And with prices the way they are right now that pressure is probably way worse. I live in Iowa. My wife and I actually took our honeymoon in Yellowstone (and you guys should ABSOLUTELY go, it is amazing, and you should go as a couple as I think that will be FAR FAR more enjoyable than being there with a gang of people with all those additional people to please). From Iowa it's a 1500 mile, 24 hour drive on way. If you fly, I'm guessing that's going to be close to $1000 for a couple. If you've got kids, ratchet all of that up. Plus hotels, possible car rental, eating out, etc etc. What I'm saying is that it's a massive financial, time, and personal commitment to go do something like for someone's wedding. If you start adding up what you're asking your family to do, maybe it will help give you some different perspective. That's not to say that you guys are not worth that commitment, but it's very possible that some of the people you're asking are simply not able to make things work and their flimsy excuses are really just their way of covering. Springing something like that on someone is kind of a big thing. I hope that what I wrote makes sense and that you're not offended or anything like that, I certainly don't mean it that way. Your wedding should be about you two and it should absolutely be exactly what you want it to be. But understand that it might be a very big ask for family to travel 3,000+ miles on a 'vacation' they don't necessarily want to be on so that they can watch you get married for an hour. And you probably (hopefully) shouldn't hold that against them or let it damage your relationship with them permanently. I understand that the cat is out of the bag to some extent already, but this isn't something worth a bunch of hurt feelings IMO. If my brother called me right now and told me he needed $3,000 I'd give it to him in a heartbeat. If he wanted me to spend $3,000 to go to his wedding half the country away... no thanks. In other words I prioritize the person, not the event. Also, congratulations! 🙂

I have no idea how I wasn't required to read it. Same with Fahrenheit 451, which I might read eventually. I did read The Jungle for school, but that was very much a skim read.

Finished Lord of the Flies last night... as with most "classics" that I've read - I guess I just don't get it. It was an OK story, but was maybe a little bit too unbelievable or something? Should have read it 20 years ago, maybe. 😄 Started We Hunt the Flame next based on my sisters recommendation. It's been almost two years since I bought it, which seems like a good amount of time to age a book before diving in, right? Thankfully they don't expire.

@Brandon pI enjoyed Something Wicked, but didn't seem particularly frightening as an adult 🙂 I bet it would be spookier as a kid! I would consider 900 pages a long book for sure... but without word count I don't really know if it's just 100 words per page I guess that's not a very long book 😄. I don't mean to get into a book-wagging contest or trying to brag, believe me. It's just perspective 🙂 I mostly read Fantasy and some SciFi, but do go though some good non-fiction usually in phases. One of my favorite non-fictions ever is Yuval Noah Harari's Sapiens. I'm not an avid Crichton reader by any stretch, but have enjoyed Jurassic Park and Andromeda Strain. Eaters of the Dead was kind of a "miss" for me, but I listened to the audio book and while I listen to a lot of audio books, I'm the first to admit that I do not necessarily consume them all that well. Re: different reading groups, sunflowers and daisies made me laugh audibly. I do not recall reading groups ever in school, but maybe I was just blind to all of that at the time. I don't feel like a particularly fast reader, but when I was younger I could really rip through books. I could read a Roald Dahl in a day as a youngster. With three kids, a wife, two dogs, fish, and a full-time job cutting into my reading time, it might take me many weeks to read some of the bigger stuff. It really feels like they can jam everything up which can get discouraging, honestly. Wheel of Time #4 is about 395,000 words and I wouldn't want to go back and figure out how long it took me to read it. Lots of nights where I might get one page and then the book is whacking me in the face. Your comment about books meant for teens being better than many give them credit for is spot on. I read a decent amount of what would be classified at "YA". His Dark Materials trilogy, Six of Crows duology, Shadow and Bone trilogy are some good ones that come to mind as fairly recent reads for me. But . When I was in that target age group I was reading a lot of Stephen King, including The Dark Tower. So I'm coming back and reading books that others might have read as kids which I think have a lot of themes that are actually quite adult. I'm not a gate keeper at all. I think reading is important and that doesn't matter if you're reading Dr Suess, Dr Spock, or Dr Strange (those are comics, right?). A few months back I stumbled across an app timer (while looking for data usage) that's built into my phone's OS (Android) and was grossed out with myself. Now... I don't use my phone anywhere near as much as some others. But when I think about my 24 hour day, am I comfortable spending 45 minutes on Facebook sometimes? A lot of times that during the downtime of my nightly discus water change. But why not read during that time instead? Or do the dishes or something? So I set a 20 minute timer and then my Facebook shuts off. Some days I hit the 20 minutes. Some days I don't even hit 10. But my overall screen time has dropped like two hours as a result. Because I'm constantly opening some article I see posted or someone says something that sends me a-googling for more information... do I really need to read a 40 comment thread about someone's sick discus or the gossip *stuff* on a local scanner page? Sure some of it might be worthwhile, but almost none of it is. Give me someone with a book in front of their face instead of a phone any day! /rant

I've finished Ray Bradbury's Something Wicked This Way Comes and Josiah Bancroft's Books of Babel #2 (Arm of the Sphinx) and Blake Crouch's Recursion in the last two weeks. Reading Lord of the Flies now, a "classic" that I simply wasn't required to read during school. Strangely so, perhaps. The same with Fahrenheit 451, which I might read next. I usually read relatively long books, but I am really liking these ~50-150,000 word books compared to 250k+. They really seem to snap through and I wonder if it wouldn't help me get through the longer stuff faster if I didn't fold in some sorter stuff in between. Typically I fold series together alternating reads between them, but they might both be pretty long books. It's got to be pretty close to time for me to head back to Wheel of Time (on #5 now) or perhaps pick up a beefier stand-alone like The Stand or Swan Song... or series like Dune... all books I hope to read soon-ish. Or because I'm enjoying some SciFi at the moment, maybe The Three-Body Problem.

Tomorrow is officially four months. Tonight I measured one at like 4.6" or so. Not a ton of growth as I did two levamisole treatments the second of which clammed them up for nearly two weeks. They are just starting to get a good appetite again. Finally lost the smallest straggler, but the other non-eater has had a real good rebound and is growing well. So down to eight fish, which is OK. They should take off running this month, though we are leaving for six days. They will be fasting during that time. Pictures don't really do them justice, but here are some. 🙂

How warm is your tank? Wouldn't worry about the hardness, my tap water is something like 20-22 degrees gH and kH (they're roughly the same). I just lost one of mine that basically had been doing just what yours is doing. I got mine at 2.5" mid-February (so 4 months - they're approaching 5" now). Two of them were non-eaters and isolating most of the time. Eventually one pulled out of it and the other just died a few days ago. Higher temp (up to 93 - tank mates and plants probably aren't going to like it) for a couple of weeks helped them eat a little more, but never kept them going. Levamisole seemed to turn the one around, tried metro for 12 days and that didn't seem to help the one who died. I'm not saying I think that's what is happening to yours, but it's something you should watch. Some of mine will have a little moment for an hour or so where they sulk away from the group, but usually they're right back at it in short order. The sick ones will just be isolated or what I call "sad" basically all the time. They quickly become very obviously "behind" the others. In my experience they do seem to grow well as soon as they do turn it around, though. I don't have the experience to be "that discus guy", but it wouldn't hurt to do a bit more water changing to see if he turns around just based on that. Mine are growing at a rate of 1/2" per month (and the biggest ones of the group a bit faster than that, were 4.5" after 3 months). About 90% water change every day for me. In any event, hope he turns it around for you!

Never heard of Otherland and haven't ready any Tad Williams, might have to try some at some point. Doors of Stone, I'm pretty sure, will eventually release. Rothfuss is pretty active and he sure seems to be talking about it a lot now, so maybe he had a big break through or something. I think he had the prologue released as part of some fundraiser he did. I enjoyed Name of the Wind, but thought A Wise Man's Fear was... not so great. It seemed like a quarter of the book was dedicated to his adult activities within the fae realm and, frankly, that just didn't click with me and I'm not a prude or anything. Not convinced that Rothfuss could really wrap things up well in just one book either, unless it's some 2000 page brick. Lots of open ends. I know he has lots more planned (or even drafted) for the universe... so maybe some of the mysteries won't be wrapped up in the main trilogy. Winds of Winter I have a hard time seeing any real path to release. Similar to Rothfuss' situation, I'm not sure how Martin could possible tie it all with a pretty bow in just one book. Also, he's 25 year older than Rothfuss. I'll certainly read them both if they ever come out! In any event, I try to go into series with the awareness that they may not ever progress beyond what is currently published. I really "fell in love" with Scott Lynch's The Gentlemen Bastards series and blew through the three published works a few years back only to learn it's a planned (10 books, I think) series... I have a hard time believing that it will ever be done, though Lynch isn't terribly old (about Rothfuss's age). But the first book (Lies of Locke Lamora) was published in 2006. I'm not sure if there's a contract issue or what, but I think Lynch just announced that he's coming back to the world with novellas... so I guess... yay? Not everyone can be Brandon Sanderson lol