Dawn419 & doc's LSTA: Confounded Computer!!!

[moolie]

(Sorry Dawn for hi-jacking your thread!)

My Dad traveled a lot for work when I was a kid, so he would always bring us back presents--something from the local used book shop. So that's why I have all of the Trixie Belden books, most of Nancy Drew, and I think nearly all of Cherry Ames. I'm sure he got them for a song back then.

Read a few Bobbsey Twins from the library, but for some reason my Dad never bought those. We have several of them now though, the kids read them when they were little--and we got them all at the used book shop. Never heard of the Happy Hollisters. My hubs really liked to read Alfred Hitchcock and the Three Investigators books

 

[Dawn419]

Well, moolie, my eyes were just tired from typing the "I'm home" post...they were still good for playing catch up in other threads. (I know, Deb, I shoulda used my fingers to do the typing! ).

Y'all hi-jack away...I enjoy it and compare it to sitting around on the porch or around the campfire with good friends...who knows were the conversation will go!

There are tons of caves in our area, moolie. We're located in the foothills of the Ozark Mountains.

Some links for everyone's enjoyment!

Arkansas Caves, Caves/Karst Systems - Ozarks, Nat'l Park Service (included that link since we're not far from the southern Missouri state line), Caves and Caverns of the Arkansas Ozark Mountains, Caves of the Ozarks (covers both AR and MO)

Glad y'all liked the pix and I'm proud of myself for walking to the railing to take them!

Will try and make it to Mammoth Springs (where the water eventually flows to from the Gulf), during the day and get pix, while doc is off this coming week. It's a cool place, in it's own right.


Spent today hauling water in, finally swept the floor (still need to mop), did some more of the cleaning that I wanted to get done before Mike showed up for a visit, did an inventory of extra feeders/waterers for the critters (just in case we end up in TN at the end of next month) and put cardboard up over the cracks between the front wall of the camper and our benches as Cheyenne keeps stashing toys through the darn things.

Speaking of Chey...she's still growing like a weed and is teething officially. We just noticed 2 days ago that she's missing several little razor blades on both sides of her lower jaw! Yay for being one step closer to not losing any more blood to her! Some days my hadns look like I lost a fight with a roll of barbed-wire, thanks to her.

 

[Dawn419]

Nothing new and exciting happening around here, lately, and I can live with that!

Had a storm come through yesterday afternoon. Saw a bit of lightning and a bit more of much needed rain. Been keeping my eye on the radar as we have another small line of storms heading this way!

Docs' week off starts tomorrow. We're going to head to moms' early and mom-nap her for a trip down to the big town of Batesville. We'll mainly be hitting the pet stores in hopes of finding new tubes for the salt tank light and hopefully a few fish to add to the 60 gallon freshwater tank.

While he's home, I hope to get the soil amended in the raised beds...it's time to get garlic planted and I'd love to get the asparagus out of the tub it's in as I have plans for it. We also need to take down 2 trees out of the orchard. One of them is an old snag and we'd left it up for the wildlife but I noticed the other day that the bottom of it looks like it's rotting out and I don't want it falling on the coop. It'd be nice if we can get the fruit bushes in the ground too, but those trees are first priority.

It'd be nice to get some more leaves shredded for the buns' poop trays as I'm out of them and used potting soil the last time I cleaned the trays. I could always use sawdust, in the trays, but I want to add the bunny gold directly to the gardens.

Well, it's looking awful dark out to the west so I'm going to cut this short.

But first, an updated pic of Cheyenne. Do you think she'll ever grow into those ears???

 

[Denim Deb]

They almost don't look real!

 

[Dawn419]

Sooo, yesterday we grabbed up mom and went to Batesville in search of replacement tubes for the salt tanks' light, fish food for the Clownfish and some freshwater tropical fish. We hit 3 different stores and came up bust on all of them! Talk about frustrating! Kinda got us homesick for TN and the mom & pop shop we used to do all of our aquarium business with.

Got home from that fail (pretty much ranting all the way) and made the decision to check on a few places on-line after we got done with our visit. Found two places...one in Walnut Ridge and the other in Jonesboro.

So, the first adventure of the day...we're heading north to Hardy and doc takes a quick pull off his A&W Rootbeer...as we pass a Sheriff's car sitting in a used car lot. Next thing we know, there's blue lights behind us so doc pulls to the side of the road and stops. He pulled us over as he suspected doc was slamming a beer while cruising down the road (good for Officer Russell to check it out, just in case) and you could just see the embarassment creep all over him when doc showed him the soda bottle. He apologized profusely and we thanked him for being so attentive! We wished each other a fantastic weekend and off we went! Cheyenne was in the back seat, hooked into her straight jacket, um, I mean safety harness so we were looking totally responsible!


Got to Walnut Ridge and the place was locked up tight, so on to Jonesboro we went...and found heaven! An aquarium store just like the one we've been missing! The co-owner, CV has an aquarium maintenance businees and opened the store because his clients were complaining about not being able to buy healthy fish locally. (They had to go all the way down to Little Rock and it was too far to get the fish home alive. It was so wonderful to meet a kindred spirit and his store...it was set up nicely, the tanks were immaculant, like I said...heaven! We got a couple freshwater fish for the hexagon and 2 different colony polyp frags (<short for fragments) for the reef. He said that if we let him know in advance, he can special order in fish for us (just like the old shop) and he'd gladly buy in stuff from our tanks for store credit (just like the old shop). And...he quarantines everything for 2 weeks before they hit the sales tanks, to make sure he's only selling healthy specimens (just like the old shop), plus he's really huge into buying only tank-raised specimens!

I've already started my "wish list" for our next visit. We need to up the amount of amphipods and copepods in the live sand of our small reef set-up as we're wanting to add a Mandarin dragonet. We'll probably plan on thinning out the Mushroom Corals of our small reef system as they have been propagating like crazy. We have greens, blues and reds and after adding the new lights tonight, the colors are really popping on them since we added an actinic tube/bulb. (Will get pix of them on Thursday, as well as the new polyp frags). We're not excited at all, about the new place...can't ya tell!

We have light cloud cover here tonight but the moon is shining brightly through it and there's a huuuuuge ring around the moon, to cool!

Hope everyone is having a wonderful weekend!

 

[Denim Deb]

Boy, you sure fooled that cop!

I can hardly wait to see the pics of your tank. Eventually, I want to get a nice freshwater tank, but just don't have the time right now. We always had fish when I was growing up, and I miss it. I'll probably have a ton of questions for both you and Pinky when I'm ready, though.

 

[~gd]

I would love to try fish. I already have four tanks that I bought to grow orchids in [humidity control but humidity is high here in NC] for anything new I like to start cheap and common, so off to the pet stores only to learn that our local city water is now toxic to most fish [just unhealthy for humans!] so the tanks that I used to drool over are long gone. Now I was a chemist and I have RO for my own use and can add minerals as needed. What I need to know is how long can I hope to transport fish in a A/C car before they go belly up due to lack of Oxygen in the bags they give/sell you. I suppose I could rent a small tank of oxygen if needed but would need advise on how to use it on fish. I may be too old to work up to Salt water fish but I am Jonesning for my waterfowl that I can't keep anymore. I need something that moves other than my pet cockroaches and the little native lizards that keep the population under control. [I haven't gotten the lizards to reproduce yet or maybe the big cockroaches eat the baby lizards?] These Lizards are known locally as 'slinks' but that is not a proper name. less than 6 inches long with colored stripes the length of the sides. one stripe is bright electrtc blue. with their head and feet hidden they look like the tails of garter snaks.The cockroaches get up to 2 1/2 inches and could eat the baby lizards if any hatched.

 

[pinkfox]

yay fishies!

im the same way, around here theres 1 little mom and pop down in savannah thats awesome, but its an hour drive...and then theres the petco-petsmart team here its so hit and miss...
id love to get my hands on a few more veil angels (koi) for my 55 fresh and some more julli cory. but they can only get small angels and my 2 existing angels woudl nom them lol)

for transport, in the bags assuming just "caputred air" i wouldnt ant to go much beyond an hour... (always ask that they use the laest bag possible but ust enough water for the fish to be comfortable and divide them up for long trips too!)
if they have an o2 tank (petsmart does) youve got some leeway. fish shopped to stores form distrubutors can be in transit for up to 3 days under norma cicurmstances with no issues...and fish ebing shipped from overseas can be bagged for even longer.

for realy long trips i like syrafoam coolers and a little battery powered bubbler...just enough water in the cooler to be deep enough for the fish, but not enough to be a spill risk lid goes onbut nor firmly, the bubbler keeps the surface agitated for easy o2 echange and the syrafoam keeps the temepratures stable. buckets will also work for this.

i <3 my fishies... if keeping a tank running wasnt so expensive id have a 55 in every room! lol.

 

[so lucky]

Several years ago I had a saltwater tank that I dearly loved. The excitement of getting live rock in and seeing what grows from it is a real thrill. I did have a problem with bristle worms, tho, and eventually the red algae got to be too much of a chore to scrape off the glass every couple of days. Salt tanks take a lot of maintenance, and all the stuff is not cheap. People scream at paying $5 for a freshwater gourami; not many able or willing to plunk down $25 or more for one little fragile fish.
That reality show "Tanked" makes me itch to get another saltwater tank.

 

[Dawn419]

Hey Deb,

I started a thread about aquariums here. First post is about how I got into them (it's all docs' fault!).


Howdy ~gd!

We used to keep aquariums for ochids, too, back in TN. We went from having a fish room (when living in town) to an orchid room (when we moved to the country).The orchids and other houseplants eventually took over another room and then pretty much the entire mobile home! Before we moved from that place, we manged to have up to 5 aquariums of fish in there, too, at one point.

I'm in total agreement with pinkfox on the transportation info that she posted. Our trip from Jonesboro to my moms' took us an hour and 30 minutes and the fish did just fine and the polyp frags were extending within a few minutes of being added directly into the salt tank. We make sure to acclimated the bagged fish/specimens to the tank we'll be adding them to by placing the bag into the tank, waiting about 5 minutes then we'll add a bit of water from the tank to the bag, wait 5 more minutes and add a bit more water from the tank to the bag, then turn the fish loose in their new home anywhere from 15 to 20 minutes. We've never had any loss with using this method of acclimation as long as the fish are healthy to begin with.

If you don't think you'd be up to a salt tank, I highly recommend you look into African Cichlids. They have the popping colors of saltwater fish, are extemely hardy and don't cost an arm and 2 legs. They can get huge, though, so do some research first.


We probably wouldn't have our small saltwater reef if it wasn't for the fact that we eventually tore down the one clients 120 gallon reef system as wife # whatever thought it was creepy and wanted a tank like we did at his fathers car dealership. We sold the large corals, live rock and most of the live sand back to the pet store for credit towards the new freshwater set-up and kept small pieces of rock, some sand from the refugium and some small coral frags to set up our 38 gallon reef.

Pic of when we first set up our 38g reef:

Here's the photo album of how we set up our small reef: http://share.shutterfly.com/action/...shareprintsharer&linkid=link5&cid=EM_sharshar


Hi so lucky!

Since dealing with both fresh and salt tanks, I don't think the salt is any harder, maintenance-wise, than a freshwater. Then again, I've label myself as an "aquarium junkie" so that probably has everything to do with it!

We do tons of research before we every settle on fish or corals to add to the salt tank to make sure that everything we add is compatable with what is already living in it and we keep our fish load very minimal.

We only do small water changes, every few months which helps the tank to maintain it's balance. Take out too much water and you upset that balance, all of your parameters get out of whack and then you end up scrambling to try and get that balance back (been there, done that, got the t-shirt).

Freshwater systems are the same way, in reguards to maintenance. My sister and niece were freaked out the first time they ever saw me do a small water change in both of our tanks as I only siphoned off about 4 gallons of water from each tank (60g & 38g) and then added the new water (RO/DI) in. "Eeeew, you just added fresh water into the dirty water. We always took all of the water out and added new", they stated. My reply was simple, "How many fish did you keep alive with using that system?". That was the end of that conversation!

Well, I need to get off of here for a bit and do some dinner preppin', be back later!