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Sep. 9th, 2004 09:02 amYesterday I used my comp time that I earned this weekend. I spent all day cleaning my house. It hadn't had a good cleaning since before Justin and I left for Washington. I also gave the fish tank a thorough cleaning. I put that off for way too long.
I thought maybe my filter was breaking (penguin biowheel) because I keep hearing snails get chewed up in it (it's kinda nasty and scary to hear) and it wasn't putting out much water, but it turns out that the intake was completely clogged with hair algae. I was able to get most of it out, but there's still a little bit in there. It's running beautifully again, though. I even put new filter media in. Good for me. :) I still haven't upgraded the lighting and my plants show it. I'm getting very minimal growth out of my dwarf sag, but my java ferns and anubias nana are doing very well. The only problem is my light is old so I'm growing this dark green fuzz all over the leaves. Even the hygrophila can't outgrow it. I removed an old java fern that was completely overgrown with that green algae. I'm hoping that the java moss will grow over the driftwood where the fern used to be. I'm getting the itch to remove all the old decorative gravel and replace it with fluorite. I have a fluorite base and then layered the other gravel on top of it, but I don't like how it looks. I'm just not sure I want to go through all of that. One day it will bother me enough that I'll just do it. I can see the fluorite through the glass on the front and sides of the tank and it really looks nice. Much nicer than the decorative gravel.
I don't use the pre-made penguin cartridges in my filter. I buy filter material and make my own because I don't want carbon in my filter. The bad part is that the filter media doesn't fit in the slot designated for the filter. So I cut the material down to size and with a needle and some cotton thread I sew all the way around the media and an x in through the center. That squishes it down enough to actually fit in the slot without stopping the biowheel. Remember when I said I was missing a neon tetra? Well, I found it. I pulled out the filter media to make more filters and there it was all mummified. The gross part was that I thought it was a leaf and I was trying to pick it out of the media. Then I realized what it was. I actually screamed. :) Seriously, though...what a horrible death. It must've jumped out of the tank somehow and landed in the bag with the filter material.
I thought maybe my filter was breaking (penguin biowheel) because I keep hearing snails get chewed up in it (it's kinda nasty and scary to hear) and it wasn't putting out much water, but it turns out that the intake was completely clogged with hair algae. I was able to get most of it out, but there's still a little bit in there. It's running beautifully again, though. I even put new filter media in. Good for me. :) I still haven't upgraded the lighting and my plants show it. I'm getting very minimal growth out of my dwarf sag, but my java ferns and anubias nana are doing very well. The only problem is my light is old so I'm growing this dark green fuzz all over the leaves. Even the hygrophila can't outgrow it. I removed an old java fern that was completely overgrown with that green algae. I'm hoping that the java moss will grow over the driftwood where the fern used to be. I'm getting the itch to remove all the old decorative gravel and replace it with fluorite. I have a fluorite base and then layered the other gravel on top of it, but I don't like how it looks. I'm just not sure I want to go through all of that. One day it will bother me enough that I'll just do it. I can see the fluorite through the glass on the front and sides of the tank and it really looks nice. Much nicer than the decorative gravel.
I don't use the pre-made penguin cartridges in my filter. I buy filter material and make my own because I don't want carbon in my filter. The bad part is that the filter media doesn't fit in the slot designated for the filter. So I cut the material down to size and with a needle and some cotton thread I sew all the way around the media and an x in through the center. That squishes it down enough to actually fit in the slot without stopping the biowheel. Remember when I said I was missing a neon tetra? Well, I found it. I pulled out the filter media to make more filters and there it was all mummified. The gross part was that I thought it was a leaf and I was trying to pick it out of the media. Then I realized what it was. I actually screamed. :) Seriously, though...what a horrible death. It must've jumped out of the tank somehow and landed in the bag with the filter material.