Zoone

We recently took a trip to the zoo of Borås, that was a quite nice zoo, but of course i wold like it to have a larger aquarium section and a reptile section which was totally missing.

The aquarium section only consisted of three aquariums, one African and two South Americans (one with discus and one with Congo tetra).

When we got out of the house where the aquariums were a couple of chimpanzees were playing next to it, I don’t know if they were both kids or if one were mother and the other a kid.
They had a game where the big one was lying on it’s back with the mouth open and the small one was sticking it’s fingers into it while the large one tried to “bite” it, this was repeated several times and then replaced with other games.

We have been out and driving around a bit in Sweden, thats why there have not been any updates for a while.

There is not any news about the aquarium, mostly due to our late arrival at home today.

This is a fun story from our trip (it’s most fun in Swedish).

We drove along a way and all of a sudden a village sign appeared and the village was Sämstad (translated to English something like “worst town”), it sounded fun ad we joked a bit about it and said it could not be nice to live in the worst town. We drove on and to our surprise the next town was named Brastad (in English something like good town) then we begun to wonder for real about the background of the name and if it had anything to do with good and worst.

The signs is not the actual signs because we drove another way back.

I cant get why my discuses always choose to get fries when i have vacation and might not be home like normal.

For what i have read the fries will manage on the parents for some weeks so maybe it does not matter if I’m not home like normal all days.

This is the first time they have reached free swimming stage, but this time the have been alone and not disturbed by the others.

There are just a few fries left, the discuses choosed the inlet for my large filter (Eheim 2217) as the place for the roe, a lot of the fries went into the filter i managed to save a few but i guess a lot of them did not make it.

I wonder what color they will be the mother is a brilliant turquoise and the father is a red turquoise.

Well i only have myself to blame, one should always fill the bottles as soon as they get empty, now i have two bottles with only a small amount in each, i guess they will get really empty in just a couple of days.

I think I will have to buy a small bottle to have as a spare.

Totally amazing macro photographs:

http://pishmo.com/macro/

I can’t still say if there is any trend in the growth (better / worse), the only thing I’m totally sure about is that the aquarium is not well.

Some plants seems to not care at all, they grow like normal, but others are totally stunned.

The Rotala macaranda seems to have some sprouts that looks OK but others are still stunned.

The Nesaea crassicaulis is totally stunned, My feeling for this plant is that it is very hard to grow, i wonder what water values it should have to thrive.

Now a commercial lightning product based on LED really exists.

http://www.solarisled.com/

There is a thread on APC about a problem that sounds a lot like the ones i have, most people there seems to lean towards low CO2.
I have a bit difficult to believe that because i have tried to check my CO2 level on all thinkable ways and all tells me that i have 30-40ppm co2.

 I have had a minor thought about the heat (there is a real heat wave here at the moment) but on the other hand most of my plants normally exists in areas which have this kind of heat for much longer periods.

I will have to wait and see what is going to happen, I will only change one factor at a time even though i would like to mess with other things as well.

I have now made my weekly water change and that also shows that something is wrong.

In past weeks the nutrition level has been very stable during the week and the start and ending levels has been quite equal, but this week the nutrition levels were about twice the level on the measurable substances.

I have also checked the pH and KH to rule out the CO2 level and controller problems, that was also fine (30-40ppm).

My guess is that something is limiting the plants and my guess is still Ca.

One thing that feels funny is that the problem seems to have accelerated with the ongoing summer heat, but on the other hand the plant mass has grown a lot also during the same period.

I will keep my additional Ca dosing for 3-4 weeks and not change anything else to check if it helps.