jwcarlson

That's The Dark Tower for me. My last go-through was audio book instead of paper, which was a good/interesting twist on the standard re-read. I typically do not re-read too much stuff, but I do find myself listening to a lot of Stephen King books that I've previously read. King is my favorite author. The audiobook subscription that I have (Scribd) has a large selection of Stephen King books that I download and listen to when I can at work, doing house/yard/vehicle work, water changes, dog walking, etc. I just finished Bag of Bones in audio form and Scribd had a version that King himself narrated. He's done quite a few of his books and I REALLY enjoy his narrations. I'd love a version of The Dark Tower that he reads. Additionally, I have no idea how King is as prolific as he is. I know he's being doing it "forever", but good grief, you'd think the guy would slow down a little in his 60s and now 70s. I don't really keep track of or "count" audiobooks. But I could see myself finishing WoT in audiobook form. Plus I've heard that the narration by, I think, Cramer (Kramer?) and Redding (Reading?). Perhaps I'd enjoy the series more having it read to me as opposed to plowing through it.

It's been a minute... I finished The Shadow Rising (not even) a couple of weeks ago and, frankly, it took forever. I'm not sure how into The Wheel of Time I am. I'm primarily a character driven reader and I know that there's plenty of people who rave about WoT characters, but I'm not sure how much I care about them (yet). Thankfully TSR is the longest book by word count, at least. I am a bit concerned because I've heard a lot of people's favorites are in the first 4-5 books and also so many that say "it really becomes the Wheel of Time in book four". Well, here I am after book four wondering what WoT is because it's starting to feel like I'm a horse on a treadmill and there's a carrot dangling just out of reach. I do not dislike the books, I just don't love them. I'll give it at least one more book and then probably read New Spring after that and see what I think. I currently have zero desire to crack open book 5. But if I'm five books in plus the prequel, I think I'll eventually plow through them. Since finishing TSR, I've been on a tear. I've read Sendlin Ascends (#1 of Books of Babel) by Josiah Bancroft and Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo. And tonight I will finish Dark Matter by Blake Crouch. Ninth House was the weakest of the group, but it was still quite good. I've read quite a bit of Bardugo (Shadow and Bone trilogy and Six of Crows duology). And boy is Dark Matter a page turner. If I didn't have to work today I'd have finished it in 24 hours. Had to force myself to go to bed around 12:30 this morning because I have to be up at 4:30! Thinking that I might need to explore some other Black Crouch books, even if Dark Matter doesn't stick the landing, it's been a good enough ride to want more. I've been trying to decide if I think that these books are this great or if they were just a needed and much appreciated change of pace. I believe I'm going to read at least one more book before returning to WoT (the next in the Books of Babel - Arm of the Sphinx, I believe). But I am in a good place as far as getting through some of my massive pile of books that I hope to read someday, which is nice. We're leaving to go stay in a cabin we rented for a week on the 18th and will be gone for six nights. It's going to be hot, but it should be a half-decent chance to get some reading done even if we're hiking and fishing and whatnot. Will have to decide if I want to consume a beefy WoT book or if I want to check 2-3 others off the "to be read" list instead.

Yeah they don't suggest a bigger tank for grow out, not surr why exactly. Someone said they swim too much in bigger tank and are burning calories. I just have sponges so not making them fight heavy current 24/7 with a big canister or something. I don't feel qualified to guess why yours are not growing much. All I know is for grow oit everyone told me pound them with clean water and lots of food. So that's what I have done. I have the water change system down pretty well. Takes me about an hour a night but time at the tank isn't much. I am doing dishes, feeding dogs/cats, and doing other things using timers to remind me to go back to the tank. Also no substrate during growout. I can't imagine a substrate in this tank and trying to keep it even remotely clean even with my daily 70% water change.

I measured one of the biggest three smack at 4.5 after three months. I'll measure a couple again around 4 months. I am in the middle of treating the whole tank for hexamita with metronidazole and the smallest non-eater started passing white stringy poop. I haven't seen him poop ever, so maybe that's a good sign. About another week of metro. Have a blanket over the tank for the duration (other than water changes), so I have no idea if it's eating or not. But it's passing *something* and I guess I take that for a good thing. How often and how much water are you changing? How do yours eat?

It would be perfect for that, I think. It has a "turn XYZ on (or off) after *whatever* minutes". I've not had any issues with connection or anything. It takes a couple minutes for it to set up in your app, but it's not a big deal at all. I have things set up mainly for less chance of forgetting. I think it would be a good option for you. I might buy a second one for my tank so that I can do some of what you're talking about (shutting air off for water change so things settle). But then have it turn on every night at 8 PM or something so even if I forget it's only off for a half hour or something. Personally, I'd say give it a shot. It also has three USB ports (but they are NOT controllable). I'm speaking specifically of mine which has six outlets and three USB. I think they also make one with three outlets and two USB.

I had been using just the single 'smart outlets' from Kasa (I think the Co-Op carries these). They've worked well. The power strip is nice because it's "one stop". It was about $50. The main reason I have it is for being able to shut off the refill pump from the tank so I'm not having to time things or have another person involved... or dead heading the pump while I'm going downstairs to shut it off. I guess what I'm trying to say is I'd get like 90% of the functionality that I need with just one of the single plugs. But before centralizing all this I had a extension cords and stuff because our utility room has only one outlet (for the dryer). And four of them right on the other side of the wall.

Technically it wasn't today, but was this past weekend. I got my water aging/pre-heating station much more cleanly installed. It's not quite done being refined, but this is a good step considering it was just sitting in the middle of the utility/laundry room before. We don't use the room other than laundry, so it wasn't a big deal. But it started becoming a big pain to get around it. So I got it moved to the wall. Installed a new outlet to power the station with a Kasa WiFi power strip. And then two separate barrels and heating zones, the smaller barrel is for the community tank, I just fill and age as needed instead of doing it daily like I do for the discus. Also has an air pump (the battery backed-up one from the Co-Op, which I love) to run an airstone in the barrel. This is all semi permanently plumbed and comes out of the wall right next to my discus tank to make water changes easier. The Kasa strip lets me program heat to always turn on every night in case I forget to turn it back on after draining the barrel. The next iteration is to plumb the drain line and refill line separately. Right now the drain line doubles as the fill. That's not a problem, but I would like to be able to just turn a couple of valves to shut off the drain and line-up the refill pump without threading/unthreading hoses. Nothing too fancy, but it sure does make water changes a breeze.

That's just stuff floating around, maybe little bubbles or possibly some fry food. Also the glass is filthy 😞

It looked like a zit. Wasn't fuzzy. I looked the next day (yesterday) and couldn't find it. So I have no idea if it was a piece of poop or something that was really well stuck? *shrug*

Yellowish protrusion on the bottom cardinal. I thought maybe a worm, but don't know. It's eating and moving fine, didn't notice anything on any other fish.

@Torrey I appreciate the kind words 🙂 I do tend to be hard on myself. I assure you it's not hard enough to be affecting my mental health or anything. I just know I can do better. Same way with my bees. The bees don't really make mistakes, but beekeepers do. I do not have many bee colony failures that are not something that happens by chance (like a new queen gets eaten by a dragonfly when she's going off to mate kind of thing). It's really lousy opening up a bee colony in the spring and seeing that they starved to death or died due to mite infestation that you didn't treat for... it's part of any hobby involving livestock. But it still stinks. I *tend* to learn really well from mistakes. I think the most discouraging part of these kinds of things is when it's something I could have prevented, but didn't necessarily control... if that makes sense. I don't control that the city started using chloramine (apparently), but I could have prevented it by doing the Prime dose as I had been. But there had been a couple warning signs that I didn't catch. The first being that when I do the ammonia test strip it's not yellow anymore, but just the faintest hint of green. I had been attributing that to heavy feeding, but I am leaning toward it being the chloramine after Prime does whatever it does. Additionally one night awhile back the fish did something similar (but to a MUCH MUCH less extent. I cranked all the air stones up and was trying to figure out what might have caused my water not to be well oxygenated in the aging barrel. Overall, this is probably one of the better ways I could have found out.

20+ years ago I bought a tiny little "blueberry oscar" in the fish aisle of a local grocery store. I'd already had a normal red oscar at home and had absolutely no idea that these blue ones were actually an albino dyed fish. So I plopped it into a 29 gallon and kind of went on my clueless way. Long story short... my blue fish wasn't doing so good and it turns out buying a sick, "bad fish" that was looked down on by a community of dedicated oscar lovers (on OscarFish(dot)com forums) pointed me down the path of learning what was and wasn't right for the fish I had. I'm not saying it led me to be some sort of master oscar keeper, but it helped a sick little dyed oscar named Squirt to live what I like to think was a pretty good, long life considering where she started. I'm not saying anyone should be ostracized or attacked for having certain types of fish. But I genuinely believe that "the way" to a better overall hobby is to guide people to make better decisions. I can't say that I've seen a single instance here of people doing anything other than trying to help guide. It's OK to point out why things people are doing are good or bad. And in the instance of a fish-loving kid... it has a very good chance of sending them down the path to better research and husbandry. Anyway... that's my two cents that no one really asked for. 🙂 Also, here's Squirt.

Three months with the discus now... I feel like this last month was pretty much lost, but looking at pictures I can tell they've grown. And my in-laws who haven't seen them for a month thought they looked bigger. So I know it wasn't lost. However, it was really hampered by doing two levamisole treatments trying to get these two non-eaters to start eating. I'm now resigned to probably moving them into a ten gallon together and seeing if I can get them rolling with higher temp and probably eventually metro. One of them has started to eat some, but the other hasn't started. Levamisole apparently makes them not want to eat. They took these treatments two weeks apart relatively difficultly. But most all of them are at least a little peckish, but I am told it can take two weeks to return to normal. In any event, they almost all died when (apparently) our water switched over to chloramines. I always put Prime in even if I age my water. I forgot for about 30-45 minutes. Just popped my head over to this (these were the best looking ones, three of them I thought were dead): If I wouldn't have just by chance gone back to look for no real reason (this was Friday the 13th), I think they probably would have been dead in the morning or at least most of them. I plopped prime in and they started turning around pretty quick after that. Also dropped in a bunch more aeration (even through there's already five air stones) over night. So that's further complicated their recovery from levamisole. However, today they seem relatively happy and are thinking about greeting me at the tank again. Nothing makes me realize how dirty the outside of the front glass is like taking a couple of pictures. I would be lying if I told you that I haven't thought about getting rid of them (because I feel like a failure when stuff like this chloramine deal happens). I do not mind the maintenance, but I do not like feeling like I'm failing something I'm caring for... In any event, they sure are beautiful fish!

My water is hard as heck and the GH pad turns purple/pink. I'm not particularly worried about GH as it should be pretty consistent in my tap water. If you want/need to know the number, there's a GH/KH test kit from API that you can buy. I think my GH and KH tested at 20 degrees each... which is a lot of drops out of the bottle! 😄

Dislike probably isn't the right word, but: goldfish, african cichlids, and any of the freakishly large fish that have almost no business being in home aquaria. I think that my tastes have changed quite a bit over the years. I used to have oscars and some yellow labs... occasionally some natives over the years... live bearers on/off. Right now, I wouldn't want any of those fish. But am having a good time at the moment with discus and a community tank with tetras, corys, shrimp, and a gourami.

Have you tested your tap water?

Thanks! I thought there were two types of the same thing (that would grow to the same size). So I guess it's full grown. Haha

Here is a better size reference shot.

I bought a hillstream loach around Christmas... so about six months ago. And it has not increased in size what-so-ever. Perhaps there's lots of different varieties and I just have a tiny one, but the next time I went into this particular store, the ones he had were many times bigger. So I thought maybe this one would grow at some point, but that doesn't seem to be in the cards. This is an old picture, but it's in a planted tank, I don't scrub the sides. There's some algae on the plants and I'm sure on the wood/rocks, but it isn't algae laden by any means. I feed daily Xtreme Krill Flakes, a shrimp pellet by Wardley (I think my wife bought this with the kids, so I've been using it... the corys seem to love it and are growing up pretty well), Co-Op fry pellets, and an algae pellet with zucchini (and other vegetables). I have never seen it actively eating anything except for on the glass, rocks, and plants. Ever since we upgraded to 37 gallon from 10 gallon qt, he got a nice rock pile and he seems to just hang out in/around that, rarely leaving that area when I'm observing. Spends most of his time inside the rocks with the shrimp as best I can tell. I don't mind if he's just a tiny fella, but it just seems like I'm doing something wrong and maybe I'm not helping him. I would guess his length to be under 1.5" and probably closer to 1". This picture makes him look huge now that I look at it. He's only about as wide as a pencil... a AA battery (which is 2") would dwarf him in comparison (I think). Am I missing something? I've been thinking about buying some Repashy, if I do that, which one would be best to buy for him?

I think that's what I'm going to do. And am considering also populating the discus tank for grins... I've got plenty of shrimp! I thought I heard if you let them intermix they'll eventually revert back to a clear version. Maybe that's the case, but it takes a longish time. If that's the case, I'm cool with whatever happens.

I suspect there is a wide range of broodiness and mothering. One of our original buff orpingtons would go broody each spring and would simply not come out of it. For a couple of years I let her hatch fertile eggs. So was an absolutely great mom, would defend the chicks against our dogs. (see pics above, she'd mother them for months). I hatched some bantam cochins and they do go broody. Two of them tandem set some eggs last year and were absolutely terrible mothers compared to our orpington. They were good egg setters, but once they hatched there wasn't a lot that they were good at... and they were done with the chicks at a very young age. It was pretty neat watching two of them setting and mothering together, though. It broke their silkie friend's heart. They were all hatched (by us) and raised together. When the two started setting the silkie would just hang out in the coop with them most of the day like "what are we doing here, guys". Then she got very mean after that and once the babies were hatched and left the coop, she'd mount and "breed" the two moms and get rough with them and the babies. Like she was upset about something. Chicken politics... it didn't last too long, just a few days.

I realize my rambling was probably unclear. I understand that different colors will eventually cloud the overall coloration, and I'm fine with that. I think I'm more asking if I'm going to have a bunch of clear shrimp in two years, something that I think I don't really want so maybe I'll start culling over the oddballs to the discus tank. But if it's just a bunch of random-ish colors I'm cool with that. I'm not selling these or doing anything with them other than letting them do their thing in the tank. Re: bloody mary shrimp - I bought them as cherry shrimp and he said "well, we have fire red". To be honest, I'm entirely unconcerned with what they're called. I just know I've seen some pics of shrimp called bloody mary with the "racing stripes" down their backs. Most of the shrimp are very well colored, a good and solid bright red. They're a little more orange looking when they're younger, but it seems once they get full sized they seem to be well colored for the most part.

Right around Christmas I bought six cherry shrimp from a local shop. At least a couple of them had some stripes down their back, looking like what I've since seen be called "bloody mary" shrimp. Anyway, since then the shrimp colony has probably grown 25x... there are just GOBS of them in the 37 gallon tank. And I greatly enjoy them. I am not really bothered by what colors the shrimp are, but have noticed some very cool colors being thrown. One that looked like a rili shrimp, one that was very close to being black, one that's a beautiful deep purple color... and then this one I saw last night. In person it looks like a lighter green with purple accents. My question is... what happens if I don't select these shrimp out? I don't necessarily have a plan to do so. But if I don't, am I just going to eventually dilute down to more-or-less clear shrimp? The VAST majority are decent red and none of these odd balls have probably reached breeding age yet. I am planning on tossing some into my discus tank at some point as I've been told by a number of people that their discus don't bother their neos. And if mine do, if it's the off colored stuff then it's just a nice snack for the discus, I figure. (but also have so many that it's not that big of a deal) So... should I fish out the odd balls and drop them in my discus tank... or should I just let the community tank just remain the thunder dome of breeding that it has been? I'm not overly concerned either way and if I'll have reasonably colorful (any color) shrimp for the foreseeable future, then I've got zero issues just letting it be. But I might want some shrimp with the discus either way. Additionally, is there such thing as an "over population" of neos in a tank? I don't think that I'm overexaggerating the population at all. There are SO many of them... I thought that the thick lipped gourami might take out a good number of shrimplets, but if he's feasting on them... it's not making much of a dent.

I think the thing is awesome! Working great. I haven't populated the second one yet, but the first set of starts are humming right along!

Forgot I had a picture of this one.