There’s Some Interesting Stuff Out There
May 23, 2009
There certainly is and as far as marine aquarists are concerned it ranges from photographs and videos about the wild reefs, information and discussion on aquarium equipment, to setting up and maintaining a marine aquarium. Amongst all of this is something that is dear to many of us, and that is DIY.
DIY (do it yourself) covers a very wide range of subjects. Within reason, just about anything to do with ordinary mortals has a DIY aspect. For example gardening, home making, photography, boat and aircraft building, home brewing etc. There’s a lot of it.
The marine hobby is also home to a considerable amount of DIY. The cost of equipment, or at any rate some of it, is enough to make those with normal wallets blink a little. ‘How does a plastic whatnot like that get a price tag of that size?’ is not an unknown query!
Aquarists are often good at DIY and aim at projects that measure up to their abilities. Provided the job is done properly with good advice available there is money to be saved, and the equipment works well.
The link is a website that is about DIY. There is quite a range available. Perhaps it could be of use?
The website has a great deal of information in addition to DIY. The list on the left hand side shows this and exploring the site is interesting and informative in many ways relevant to the hobby.
Responsibilities, But Temporary
May 17, 2009
Sunday is the day I do my aquarium maintenance. As far as that is concerned, it’s done. There’s more this week though.
No I haven’t obtained more livestock¸ though I’m sometimes tempted particularly by that beauty the copperband butterfly fish, Chelmon rostratus, what a beauty it is. It does involve more livestock though, but they aren’t mine.
Peter is going away for a week with his wife, my 6 year old grandson Josh, and his wife’s parents. So yours truly is going to care for Peter’s marine tank, which I’ve done before. It doesn’t usually give any trouble, though once a metal halide bulb blew. The aquarium is bigger than mine and, like me, Peter tends to leave it alone and is not constantly fiddling. It’ll be interesting to see if I can spot anything new that has appeared.
That’s not the end of my aquatic responsibilities for the week. Josh has two goldfish, a silver one called ‘Cloudy’ and gold one called ‘Sunny’. They’re in a decent small tank, better than a goldfish bowl, with a small powered filter. They seem happy enough.
I also need to watch over Josh’s two fairly new rabbits. They’re white with a few small black spots on, and the fur is really soft. I forget the names, something to do with Star Wars – well, why not! Actually I like them, when the cage is approached they come to the front and stand on their hind legs very close to the visitor. Probably much like fish if the truth were known, they think there’s food about!
Anyway, here’s hoping they all have a good time on holiday, the humans that is, I’m sure they will. I’ll do my best to keep the other members of Josh’s family happy as well.
At Last…..
May 9, 2009
Finally, after some issues Aquarists Online is now living happily on another server at another hosting company.
Various issues were encountered when the backups were taken of the site. Basically the backups were taken, however when they were restored they were found to be corrupt!
Luckily the new hosting company found a way around this and after a lot of testing Aquarists Online was transferred.
So apologies for the lack of posts recently but we did not want to lose anything during the transfer.
We will now get back to what we like to do – writing articles!
We’re Having Issues With Our Hosting
May 6, 2009
You may have noticed that Aquarists Online has been up and down recently.
The reason for this is that we are having issues with our web hosting. For some reason the server which Aquarists Online is hosted on keeps crashing.
This has been happening intermittently for a few weeks now and it looks like our web host is not doing a great deal to resolve the situation.
Due to this we are moving Aquarists Online to a different hosting company.
Therefore until the move is completed we will not be adding any more posts.
Hopefully the move will be nice and smooth – fingers crossed anyway!
Do You Fancy Finding One Of These In Your Aquarium?
April 6, 2009
I know I certainly wouldn’t – If I saw this I would run a mile.
Aquarium staff from Cornwall, UK’s Blue Reef Aquarium have located a huge 4 foot worm in one of their display aquarium which was attacking corals and fish within the aquarium.
For many months the staff were unable to indentify what was attacking the corals and fish. In many cases the corals were nearly cut in half!
The staff laid numerous traps around the reef however when they checked them they found that the traps had been destroyed.
The aquarium staff eventually came to the decision that they must find out what was causing the damage and therefore started to dismantle the reef. Half way through they found the culprit – a four foot long polychaete worm!
What was worrying was that the traps the staff had laid was full of bait and hooks and the worm must have simply digested the lot – hooks and everything.
The staff eventually managed to lure the worm out of it’s hiding place using fish bait where it was captured however the worm did put up a good fight and even bit through a 20lb fishing line.
The coral reef display has now been put back together and is starting to recover. The worm, now known as ‘Barry’ and thankfully not destroyed now lives in it’s own aquarium and the staff can only presume that it arrived as a small worm hiding in a live rock shipment.
Message to you all – check your live rock – you never know what’s hiding in there.
Source : Daily Mail (UK)
Introducing The Aquarium Store Directory
April 4, 2009
Myself and John are always on the lookout for things which may be useful to the aquarium hobbyist.
We were recently discussing how it would be good if there was an area where hobbyists could locate either online aquarium stores or local fish shops which are near to them. As we were discussing it we got quite excited about the prospect of being able to offer this service on Aquarists Online so we had a look to see if there was a script we could use to create one – which we found and as the title of this post says – the Aquarium Store Directory was born!
What is the Aquarium Store Directory?
As the name says it is a directory where people can list local fish shops in their area, local fish shops they have visited as well as online aquarium stores that they use or have used in the past.
The directory is categorised into two areas. The first being for local fish stores and the second being for online web stores. Each of these two categories are broken down by country and the first is then broken down further into regions whilst the second is broken down into the types of products the web store sells.
How can this be beneficial?
We believe that the directory can be useful to aquarists for a number of reasons.
How many times have you been on a day trip and thought to yourself why you were there ‘I wonder if there is a fish shop anywhere’?
Quite a few times I’m sure – I know I have!
With the directory you can have a quick check in the directory before you go to see if there are any listed stores in the area. Dependant upon the details in the listing you may be able to find out what items the store sells, what days/times it is open, pictures etc. You will also be able to find out how to get there as we have incorporated Google Maps into the application so you can find out where it is and how to get there at a glance.
Another benefit is the listings of online web stores. If you are looking to purchase online then you can have a look in the directory and see what stores are available.
In both of these categories we have also implemented a reviews and ratings system so that people who either use the online store or visit the fish shop can rate it and leave a review as to whether it was good or not.
There is also an enhanced search function which has been enabled. This enhanced search function allows you to search for entries by post code. Therefore you could enter your post code and search for listings which are within a certain distance. You never know there may be a fish shop quite near to you which you didn’t even know was there!
Here’s the thing though…….
For obvious reasons John and I can’t populate this directory therefore for this area to be a useful resource stores need to be listed by people in the relevant areas.
Therefore, if you have used an online store, have a local fish shop nearby or have been to a fish shop on your travels then why not pop over to the Aquarium Store Directory and enter the details. It is really quick and easy to do. You will need to be a member of the community area to be able to submit a review however again this is easy and simple to do. The reason we require people to be a member before being able to submit items is an attempt to combat spam listings. Even though we have enabled moderation on all listings there will still be some people that will attempt to list spam entries. If we left it open and it became full of spam entries then we feel that this would reduce the value of this area and it would quickly become a pointless area – which we feel would be a shame.
Anyway please pop over and list the stores you know or have used. The more listings we can get the more use it will be for other aquarists.
So there we go – another service provided by Aquarists Online.
Here’s the link
Detecting Pollution With A Robot Fish
March 28, 2009
British scientists from the University of Essex have developed a robot fish which has the capability to be able to detect pollution in water.
Each of these fish has an associated cost of £20,000 and a shoal of five of them are shortly to be released into the Bay of Biscay.
Each fish is around 2 foot long and has various inbuilt sensors to be able to detect various types of chemicals in the water. They run on battery which has between 5 to 8 hours of battery life and due to built in artificial intelligence do not require to be controlled remotely. Instead they are able to swim around using their own navigational abilities whilst avoiding objects.
The robot fish took three years to develop and although robotic fish have been investigated for over 10 years the developers claim that this one is the smartest yet.
The developers also say that this is not a new design but a design which has been created by hundreds of millions of years of evolution and they hope that if this project is a success they can be used around the world to prevent the spread of pollution.
Moving forwards into the future they hope to increase the robots intelligence and implement features such an recharging stations where the fish will go and recharge itself when it starts to run low on battery.
Some of these robotic fish have been placed into aquariums with live fish at the London Aquarium and some visitors have not been able to tell that it is a robotic fish. A competition is being run by the London Aquarium for child visitors will be able to name the new aquarium inhabitants.
Who knows perhaps in the future these type of fish could be used on and around the coral reefs and provide data back to scientists to identify and reduce pollution threats.
Actually here’s another idea – how about a smaller one for aquarists to use to monitor the internal water parameters of the aquarium?
Below is a video of the fish in action – it is eerily natural, especially when it turns.
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