fishie’s aquarium

I’m sure I say this every time I make a post: Yes, I know, I’m neglecting this blog. I have many good excuses, though. For one, I’m sick of the bastard bots submitting comments. Luckily I have it set so that ANY new commenter gets filtered, but it’s frustrating when ALL the comments are spambots. I probably just need to get off my ass and update my WP version and maybe the newer version has SOME kind of way to prevent bots, but damn if it doesn’t and I have to move all my posts or resign them to the black hole of blog-dom.

Second, I’ve been “busy”. Last post I made was a few weeks after I started my new job. I got a new cat, impulsively moved a few months afterwards, and have generally been not so motivated blog-wise. I’ve still been making stuff (some pretty awesome stuff too, if I might add), but most of my time has been spent on one (actually, a few) major project(s) since August.

I present to you the best thing in the world (please excuse youtube’s fetish with darkening all my videos):

This is a planted 55 gallon freshwater community aquarium. As it is at the moment, I have 2 dwarf gouramis, 6 glass catfish, 3 zebra loaches, 9 tetras, and a clown pleco. I uploaded a few more aquarium pictures in my youtube account, so feel free to watch to get some better video of some of the fish. This isn’t my only aquarium, but it is by far the largest and the most labor-intensive. I also have a 5.5 gallon tank that has 5 white cloud minnows and a ghost shrimp, and a snail tank that has more hydras (seriously!) than snails in it. I might move the snails to the minnow tank and have a hydra tank.

Plecosaurus Rex

This beautiful snail fell victim to the loach-pocalypse :(

This is Stumpy. Yes, I’m naming my fish, and I am able to tell two of the glass catfish apart from the others (I can also tell the gourami apart and I’m working on the loaches, although the minnows are collectively named Phinneas.)

Also, since discovering the manual focus feature on my otherwise mediocre waterproof camera, I have been able to take some pretty sweet pictures. Here are some pictures from the Seattle Arboretum I took yesterday, on a lovely wet afternoon that turned into a retina-scorching bright afternoon before turning back into a “holy crap it’s pouring so hard the water is overflowing over the curb onto the sidewalk” afternoon: