Lighting Upgrade

As was mentioned in the previous post, I recently upgraded my lighting. I currently have 8 x 54W T5 lights. To illustrate the difference it would make, I took a couple of photos.

First some background. The tank has glass top covers to prevent splashing of water, reduce evaporation and help keep the fish in the water. Obviously with time these glass covers get lots of salt residue on them. This reduces the amount of light reaching the water column. I never cleaned mine since I never thought about its effect on the lighting.

The 4 x 54W T5 I originally had in there consisted of 2 fittings of 2 T5’s with individual reflectors. Due to space restrictions I had to add a 4 x 54W T5 fitting - with one common reflector.

Full Article

Its been 1 month now...

It is 1 month now since the move and a couple of things had happened. Firstly, I lost a couple of live stock during the immediate days following the move, as well as a couple of weeks later (I doubt it was due to the move).

I lost my Frogfish, my Leaffish and one Chromis. The Leaffish was in bad shape before the move - I think it got some kind of bacterial infection since it looked like it was molting but looking like that for 3 weeks - and refusing to eat the whole time.

The Frogfish - yeah well, I think the stress was maybe a bit too much.

Full Article

I finally found a good use for my degree

I have had my B.Eng (Electrical) degree since 1999 - that is 7 years. Only today I found a practical, worth while use for it.

It is one HELL of a good bug smashing stick....

Move!

Moving a 120l QT, 400l FOWLR and 550l Reef tank is no easy job. Especially if the new place is upstairs... And not just up the stairs, the stairs is in an L-shape. Which means the tank is too long to fit around the corner. Try lifting a 10mm braced glass tank over a 1.3m high railing...

Then to move 1100+ litres of water.... 80kg of live rock. And all of this whilst trying to keep the fish and corals alive.

Well, it is done. I will post pics soon.

Some really useful applications

During the course of life and work I had crossed paths with a huge amount of applications for the Macintosh platform. I have compiled a small list of the most useful applications that I cannot see myself go without.

Mori
Mori is a general purpose outliner/notebook that I use extensively to collect and sort all the bits of information one generates during life. It is rather new but powerful, however there are still some critical features missing such as customisable folder views etc.

Merlin
Merlin is a project management tool much like Microsoft Project - just slicker and cheaper.

Full Article