Thoughtophone

I read about DIY CO2 in a few places. It suggested radical improvements in plant growth. I decided I'd have a go. The fermentation bit is really easy. I suggest you buy your supplies, including disinfectant, from anywhere that supplies to home brewers. Use white wine yeast. Various articles call it Champaign yeast. I suspect calling it Champaign yeast is an excuse to charge you more, and in any case, you probably aren't allowed to call in Champaign unless that's where it came from, anyway. The property you want is tolerance to high acidity and alcohol levels, so it will last a long time. I've found 2 and a half cups of sugar and 2 cups of water will last for two weeks with half a teaspoon of yeast. I do the activation in warm water first. See this article . I inject the CO2 into the output hose using a t-piece: 12mm through, 4mm T. I find the most of the CO2 has dissolved by the time the water gets over the lip of the tank and back down again. I've also used pne

My aquarium project has been progressing slowly, but finally I have some fish. I've actually had some shrimp along the way, too. Any way, straight to a couple of photos: These are Danio erythromicron : cross banded danios. They are very shy and move quicky. They are extremely difficult to photograph. I choose them because they like reasonably hard, alkaline water, and that's what I've got. They are also beautiful - the photos don't do them justice. I'm hoping they will be a little more relaxed in a few weeks. I've got a dozen of them for now. More than this is recommended, but I think I'll buy something different next. Perhaps something a little less up tight, and more visible. I've added some more plants, and used some taller, but more sparse planting in the middle ground to try and draw them out where I can see them. This does seem to work. I've also got some shrimp. They are cherry shrimp, but they are a little disappointing to be honest

I got my acrylic tank on Monday. theplasticpeople.co.uk deserve a link, because it looks great, and they were very helpful. It wasn't cheap, but it was still cheaper than the low iron glass. It looks even better. You would think that 10mm of acrylic would look a bit chunky, but it just doesn't. Perhaps its the clarity. The corners look perfect, basically because they are. It now seems really silly I was so determined to have rounded corners. I may eventually find it scratches easily, but for now I'm going to enjoy it. I've done some aqua-scaping and put the plants in. They are mostly unscathed. I got 5 bunches of Egeria densa with a bulk discount, and they do look a little worse for wear. It was hardest to ensure good light for them. I bought most of my plants from www.gardenandleisure.com . Its certainly the cheapest place to buy the Tropica range of plants, and they did a good job of the packaging. I've now found www.plantedtanks.co.uk who have an amazing ra

Do you like my 'Improvised Aquatic Environment'? Or is the name too sinister? Of course, because my aquarium burst two days ago, my plants, which I'd been waiting for for more than a week arrived today. This is one of those projects that took on a life if its own. I filled a plastic storage container with water last night, knowing I'd need to get the water up to temperature, but when I got home, the rim of the container was beginning to buckle a little. I found some bits of wood, and added some support. The heater is stuck on to the aquarium lid - I didn't want any risk of melting the side of the container. The plants are attached to a bit of chicken wire to keep them down. The filter is set up to provide a bit of circulation, the light attached with various bits of wood and clamps, and tomorrow, I'll try out my CO2 system. I wouldn't want my plants to suffer now, would I? I've also ordered my acrylic aquarium. I still plan to repair the glass

I was sitting watch TV, when I heard the sound water trickling onto the floor. Thankfully, the leak was slow, and I was able to get all the water out of the tank with a siphon, before much of it ended up on the floor. A seriously lucky escape. If only it was so easy to deal with leaky reactors. I guess I need no longer wonder what might have been with the acrylic aquarium. I've had enough of dodgy glass and silicone. At least I know how to dispose of this one, and it might be fun.

Someone keeps signing up my gmail address to things. The address they use has an extra '.' in it, but as far as gmail is concerned the '.' isn't significant. I could use the reset password feature to stop the accounts bugging me, but this is possibly illegal. In any case, I don't understand why the address wasn't verified in the the first place. The offenders so far have been Indiarocks, Spotify, and Gogoinflight. Poor show guys. You really should know better. Update: Spotify and Gogoinflight have something in common: a free trial. Essentially they are inciting this type of behaviour, and not attempting to defend against it. Here's a blogger using his *cough* real *cough* email address to sign up: The GOGO InFlight WiFi Free Google Holiday Internet Scam , and then setting his browser agent to trick the system into thinking he was using a mobile device. All good clean fun.

http://mitnse.com/2011/03/13/ why-i-am-not-worried-about- japans-nuclear-reactors/ There's been a lot of anti-nuclear sentiment being vented over the last few days, but it seems to me that if a reactor this old survives an earthquake this big without serious consequence, the safety of nuclear power is no longer in doubt. Natural disasters don't come much more challenging than this. These reactors are much better designed than Chernobyl. They have control rods that don't speed up the reaction as they are being inserted. They have a whole extra layer of defence, which hasn't been called into service yet: the secondary containment vessel. Some scare mongers have been suggesting that if meltdown occurred, the core would melt its way down through the base of the plant into the ground. This is plainly not true: there was a meltdown at Chernobyl, and the core didn't melt a hole in the concrete floor then. Unlike at Chernobyl, if there is a meltdown, it alm

I wonder how many mistakes you can make, buying an aquarium. I mean, just the aquarium itself - not any of the other paraphernalia. I've had an aquarium custom madfe by my local glazier. I chose low iron, tempered glass. The low iron glass was a good, but expensive choice. It really does make a difference to the way the corners look. I'm not too concerned about the not having rounded corners now. Tempered may not have been so clever. First up, it makes all the pieces a little irregular, so it doesn't fit together perfectly. Second, there's something slightly odd about it optically. I've read its polarising. Its noticeable. Finally, there's the question of how vulnerable the corners are to impact.  The glazier didn't explain any of this, which is a little dissapointing. I think I won't worry about the risk of breaking the glass. It'll be spectacular, but I'll deal with it in the unlikely event. I have now finally got a quote for a 10mm acryl

It may seem inherently unwise to ship an aquarium from Germany to the UK, but look at it this way: Its already got from China to the distributor, and on to the vendor in one piece. Why wouldn't it survive the final journey? I want one of these: The Dennerle 60L nano cube . Pretty isn't it? Those rounded corners. Its just the right size for where I want to put it as well, and you wouldn't want anything smaller: too hard to look after. Dennerle only sell the 60L version in Germany for whatever reason. Even with shipping they are reasonably priced, so I decided to order one anyway. I got an email telling me the Aquarium had been dispatched, but wasn't given a tracking number. I asked for the tracking number, and then asked again, explaining it was urgent, and finally got it. On the day the courier said they would delivery it: 'Out for dispatch', I waited at home to receive it. At lunchtime, I checked the tracking site to see a report of 'returned to dep

I somehow came to like the idea of having an aquarium sometime last year. I've had Aquaria before, as a child. Anyway, I like plants, and I like water, the are both sources of tranquillity for me. This aquarium will mostly be about plants, therefore, with a general plan to add fish some time in the future. So, if I want to grow plants I need a good light source. Also, this aquarium is going to be in my living room. I want the light to flicker and sparkle through the moving water. It turns out this rules out just about every aquarium package you can buy. They either have wimpy LED lights, or fluorescent lighting. The wimpy LED  lights aren't really going to make the plants grow, and the fluorescent lights don't sparkle. I was quite keen on some sort of all in one set-up, that I could tinker with later, but since I can't get what I want, I've got straight to tinkering! I've bought some Luxeon Rebel LEDs. I'm based on the UK, but they sell direct world wide