I do still have fish, by the way

I realized it's been AGES since I posted anything to do with my fishies. This was probably the last post and that's over four years ago! Whoops!

Well, first of all, the big tank is still around! Here's how it looks nowadays:

Many of the fish from the old post are still around, but one major change is that the tank is now also home to a trio of kissing gouramis, two natural green ones and one pink piggy. The green ones arrived not long after the previous post, so they're about 4 years old now, but the pink one is a bit younger with a mere 3 years.

This is Alpha Lips, also known as Känkkäränkkä or Känkkis among friends, showing off his impressive lips. As the name suggests, he (or she?) is the boss of the group and of the whole upper half of the tank. This guy is incredibly curious about his surroundings, as are the other two kissies. When I walk past the tank in the morning, Känkkis is always there in the nearest corner to say good morning. When we have guests over he can barely contain himself from all the exitement. If he were a dog he'd be the kind that jumps all over everyone. People! Yay!

You'll recognize Fishmeat the red-finned shark from the old post, he's about 5 years old now and still as handsome as ever. This is Känkkis' nemesis, and Känkkis is Fishmeat's. They have a kind of truce going on, where Känkkis rules the upper half, while the bottom is Fishmeat's kingdom. Here they're both at the border of their respective domains, hence the reasonably peaceful picture.

Here's Mr Kissington on the right, the other green kissing gourami. Along with Känkkis of course, who is too curious about what's going on to stay out of the photos.

He doesn't get to visit the bottom of the tank much though, Fishmeat makes sure of that! Hence this is the only Känkkis-free photo in this set. These guys, posing so nicely in a row for me, are three of my horseface loaches (I'm sure you can see where they get the name). The big one in the back was in the previous set of photos too, he's the the oldest at more than 7 years and is nearing 15 cm (6 inches) in length. The two little ones I got 4 years ago. Quite a size difference!

So here we have a few old faces and a few new ones. There's a bunch more fish in the tank I can introduce to you, but let's save some for another time!

My Creative Space: Nessies!

Well, I finished the custom order I mentioned I was working on last week. These plesiosaurs were shipped yesterday and I miss them already. *sigh* I'm just so happy about how they turned out.

I might have to make a big Nessie or two for myself to sit by the aquarium. I think the red-finned Fishmeat (seen chatting with the plesies in the photo) misses the company as well.


Want to see the creative spaces of others? Head on over to Kootoyoo's blog for a look!

The Fishy Project at 3 months

Well, it's been about 3 months since I got the big fish tank. Time to do an update, don't you think?

Behold the great dwelling of fishies as it is today. It's come along quite nicely since the last photos on the blog, I think! A bit more moss, a bit more growth by the plants in the background and I will be a happy girl indeed.

I thought I'd show off a few of my older fish, who moved into this big one from my other aquariums. Here's a horseface loach hanging out in front of a couple of Sterba's cories. There's a nice horde of cories in here, almost 30 of them, which also includes emerald green and bronze cories. Between them and the Synodontis catfish, it gets pretty lively during feeding times!

Here's another "oldie": Igor, the starlight bristlenose. She may look all pretty and dainty, but you don't want to get between her and her food. Trust me. Even the bigger fish are wary of her.

Fishmeat, the gorgeous but temperamental janitor of the tank. Fishmeat's not the same as the red-finned shark in the previous update, sadly Redeyes Jr jumped out of the tank the night after that post was made. :( The aquarium needed a red-finned cleaner though, so Fishmeat arrived.

(I carefully picked Fishmeat out from about two dozen individuals as the one who was the most interested in cleaning and the least interested in chasing others. I'm sure the girl selling him was reeeeal happy with me, having her catch a specific one among dozens of nearly identical-looking fish. She got the right one though (very nice service) and Fishmeat has proven to be a very good choice. As you can see, he won't stay still even long enough to have his picture taken and instead continues to clean the plants.)

The tetras don't much care for staying still either, so here's the best photo I got of them. I've had the glowlight tetras for a few years, but the rummy-nose tetras (guess which they are, ha) are a new acquaintance that has been on my wishlist for years. The photo shows about a third of the tetras - no way could I get them all in the same shot.

(Also shown: a swordplant leaf chomped on by Igor. She protests visibly if she feels it's been too long since her last zucchini or other veggie delight.)

The Fishy Project continues

As is probably easy to guess, I have been busy with the new fish tank. It's fun work though. =) Here's the current view from what has already become my favourite spot on the sofa.

As you can see it's still quite unfinished, but it's getting better every day. (Excuse the thermometers here and there - there's a new heater in there and I want to be able to easily check that it's doing its job properly.) I thought I'd show these work-in-progress photos as well, to see how the aquarium develops.

For the tech-curious: the blue thing in the back left corner is the biological filter I built, a so-called Hamburg Mattenfilter according to these principles. It's basically a cylinder with a bottom, made of blue foam and containing a water pump. I made one for another tank 5 years ago and it's worked well, although for this I changed the design a bit.

The first few fishies were moved today: a twig catfish (Farlowella sp.), a red-finned or rainbow shark and a bunch of upside-down catfish.

This guy or gal, called Red-Eyes Jr, is the red-finned shark. There's only one because they get very territorial as adults, but s/he's still quite young and seems rather social - s/he's quite taken to the catfish and likes to swim along with them around the aquarium.

Here's a couple of the upside-down catfish. As the name says, the swim mostly upside down which looks awesome. :D They're also lively and really fast, they can swim from one end of the 160 cm long tank to the other in just a few seconds. I was actually quite pleasantly surprised that they have been happily swimming around even with the lights on, I didn't expect that. There's 8 of them now, but another 7 should arrive this weekend, making a decent-sized group of them.

That's all the photos for now, more coming later I bet!

(Aaaaand finally an obligatory fish safety bulletin: if you're setting up a fish tank from scratch, adding fish this soon is not a good idea. Fish produce nitrogen compounds that turn into ammonia/ammonium, which is poisonous to the fish. In a mature aquarium, the ammonia/ammonium is quickly changed into nitrite (a litte less dangerous), which in turn is changed to nitrate (fairly harmless). All this is done by certain bacteria, which need to be grown in the tank before fish can be added - this process is called "cycling". In this case, I moved over not only the fish from the old aquarium, but also the mature filter, some sand and decorations - all of which contain the "nice" bacteria that are mentioned above. I'll also be checking the nitrite & nitrate levels regularly just in case, so the fishies will be safe.)

IT IS HERE

It has arrived! My new aquarium is here, with its delicious 160x48x48 centimeters and 370 liters (that's about 63x19x19 inches and 98 US gallons for you non-metricians). Yum! =) It was custom-built with special measurements and a stand that goes with our bookshelf, and was brought into our livingroom on Friday (sooner than I expected) by the guy who made it and his son. A handmade aquarium and stand fits a crafter, I suppose?

The new tank is inspected by my giant knitted Pleko. He's quite interested in that big piece of wood, I think.

This is a dream-come-true type of thing. I've been planning and saving up for this for years, and now with the new apartment I'm finally able to get a nice big aquarium for my fishies. I'll combine fish from two of my old tanks into this one, but there should be room for one or two new species as well.

(By the way, the piece of wood in the left corner is heavy. It occured to me, as I was dragging it home through town from the fish shop, sweating and gritting my teeth in the hot sun and with passers-by looking rather amused, that I must really be some kind of an idiot. Why else would I not only do things like that, but pay money for this "pleasure" and be ridiculously happy about finally being able to get this expensive and heavy log? Yeah. Sounds like an idiot to me.)

It is almost as long as me. =)

The wood is scrubbed (ugh) and the sand is washed (UGH). I skipped the last 20 kg of sand and went for "only" 60 kg. The sand looks great, natural-looking with a reddish tint, but it is awful to wash. I've rinsed it at least a billion times and the water is still cloudy. I believe the result will be worth the back ache, though. The good news is, all the annoying labour is done and now it's on to decorating it and other such fun bits! Yay!

Current status: Half-filled and full of tiny dust. Not quite there yet.

FREEDOOOOOOM! Or, an interesting fishy tidbit.

While impatiently waiting for my new big tank to arrive (oh yes, it's on its way, all 160 cm of it), I have been amusing myself by looking up various fish species and planning what to put in said big tank. I came across this video while looking up info on hillstream loaches.

"Muahaha! Your silly glass boxes can't keep ME inside! FREEDOOOOOOOOM!"

As is often the case with seemingly baffling fish behaviour, it has its roots in the way the fish behave in the wild - in the case of this climbing action, it's how they travel past fast currents. Here's a neat article for those inclined to read more about this behaviour.

May Day! Plus some fish

Yay, May Day! (No, not the distress signal kind, but this.) And what a fine May Day celebration it has been. We tried wine that was older than myself, got to wear silly headwear and had a nice picnic in warm sunshine. (Whilst listening to the, uhm, delightful tunes of the Rocky theme played on a melodica, courtesy of some other picnickers nearby. Again and again. Oh, and got to watch some playful puppies, which made all good.)

Alas, the camera was forgotten on all these occasions, so you will have to make do with a somewhat random couple of photos of some of my fish enjoying their (almost May) dinner. I have at least four different species of Pangio or kuhli loaches in there, but only two or three agreed to pose for these.



In other, knitting-related news, I'm working on a new knitting pattern for the shops and should have something ready this month. Stay tuned, if you feel so inclined.

Something Fishy, part 2

I promised you photos from the aquarium weekend, didn't I? Well, here they are! It was a very good weekend with many visitors - the reason why these photos are so people-free is that I was too busy during the hours the show was open to take any photos and thus ended up with mostly ones I took before the event.

Here's three of the eleven fish tanks in the show. The one on the left, with the oh-so-gorgeous black plastic covering three sides, is one of mine.

The second one I brought to the show, set up just for this event. You can see its (borrowed) inhabitant in the top middle part of the tank - an apple snail.

Mr Morrgan, giving this photo an air of mystery with his odd pose. What is he looking at??

The garden is a fantastic place for an aquarium exhibition; the tropical surroundings are just perfect.

One of the garden's beauties, an Epiphyllum of some kind.

Tuesday Finds: Aquaria

So, did you know I was at an aquarium exhibition this weekend?

Haha, I know I've mentioned it in every post lately, but I'll stop soon, I promise. I'll post a few photos from the event later this week though, so that'll be more fun than just talking.

In the mean time, take a look at these items! As all has been revolving around the aquatic world lately, I'm sure it comes as no surprise that that's the theme for this week's Tuesday Finds.

Do you like fishies but don't feel inclined to start up a whole aquarium? MiChiMa has the answer! Guillermo here is apparently a friendly guy who likes worms and you can ask to have him converted to for example a keychain, so he'll be with you at all times. Really, who can resist that smile?
($7, MiChiMa.etsy.com)

Those of you who have followed this blog for a while may remember that I have a big soft spot for angelfish. It is no wonder then that I fell for this print of a watercolour painting, showing three lovely angelfish in their domain, by AllKindsofArt.
($30, AllKindsofArt.etsy.com)

For the last find of the week, we move on to the marine underwater world. Maui Crystal carries beautiful glass art, such as this idol in orange and black, mostly inspired by the local sea creatures.
($198, MauiCrystal.etsy.com)

Rainbow Six? Rainbow Fish!

The local aquarium club is holding their third annual aquarium exhibition this weekend, which should be a fun event. I have some photos from last year's exhibition, if you're interested.

This year the club is also organizing a raffle and needed a bunch of small prizes for it. So, I looked at Eustace the tiny goldfish, then at my pile of leftover yarn in many colours and had an idea. The result you can see on the right: rainbow fish! I'll go look for keyrings today and make these into little key fobs.

Cucumber Love

This is my bristlenose catfish (Ancistrus sp.) called Mörkö. She is a lovely lady who takes care of her health by including lots of veggies in her diet, such as cucumber and zucchini (and the occasional sword plant, much to her owner's dismay).

She really loves cucumber. Here's the heart-shaped proof, fished out of the aquarium the other day:

Goodbye Nemesis

Last night my marbled angelfish Nemesis passed away. He was 11 years old and, frankly, gorgeous even at his old age. I have and have had hundreds of fish and few make me cry when they pass away. Nemesis is one of those few. :(

Nemesis moved to my tank together with a few other marbled angels in 1997, when he was about 3 cm (a little over an inch) in diameter. From such a tiny little fish he grew into a 16 cm (6 1/3 in) long, handsome male. Despite his large size he never harmed his smaller tank mates, though he'd shown his strength in territorial disagreements with other angels.

He was always curious and seemed to watch us as much as we watched him. When I moved into my own place, there wasn't any room for his big aquarium and it stayed at my parents' place. It is placed in the hall, across from the front door, and he would come out and greet all family members when we got home. He was a bit wary of visitors, but would eventually come and check them out too.

Nemesis lived with his mate Hobart until about a year ago, when she passed away from old age, suddenly but peacefully. She was found in one corner of the tank, with no external signs of any trouble, with Nemesis by her side. For about a week after her death, Nemesis stayed in that corner and wouldn't come to eat. I won't go as far as to say fish grieve, but it was clear that Nemesis was stressed and felt something was wrong. Understandable, considering Hobart and Nemesis had been together for 10 years.

Nemesis himself passed away just as suddenly and peacefully as Hobart. The day he died, he had come to greet my mother when she came home from work, as usual. He showed up around feeding time too, even though he had no appetite. When my mother checked up on the fish one last time before going to bed at about midnight, he had passed away.

Goodbye Nemesis. We miss you.

Nemesis a week before he died.

So it's been a week since my last post...

...what have I been up to? Well, in no particular order:

- Scratched the cornea of my right my eye, leading to much teary irritation and pain. Ow ow ow. It's almost back to normal now, fortunately, just a bit tender.

- Adopted a poor lonely bronze cory (Corydoras aeneus), to join one of my two schools of them. He was unwanted because he was skinny with torn fins and damaged barbels (his moustache, as I like to call them), but he's eating now and the fins are already healing, so hopefully he'll recover fully. :) (The ones in the photo are two I've raised, not the recovering one.)

- Trying to remember how to do statistics with SPSS while working on my MSc degree. It's been a while since I used it last, but I think I've got the hang of it now. I also found I still detest doing statistical analysis. Bleh.

No knitting news? Nope, afraid not, unless you count organizing my yarn stash better. This week's been full of other things to do and the eye situation didn't help either. Hopefully I'll have something to show next week, or perhaps even on the weekend.

Speaking of the weekend, have a good one!

Something Fishy

Well, the weekend is over and I'm completely exhausted. I spent 9-10 hours each day at the garden where the aquarium exhibition was held, plus I helped set things up before and take them down after. Time for a long, looooong night's sleep, methinks.

The aquariums were set up in the garden's greenhouses in tropical environments, which is a pretty awesome way to show them off. The aquarium below is the one I brought there for display. It's my smallest one and the only inhabitants are Red Cherry shrimp. The little red blobs in the photo is all you'll see of my shrimp this time, unfortunately I didn't get a good photo up close (there are some very pretty pictures at the bottom of this page though, if you're curious).


The fish photos here are all of fish at the show I would have liked to bring home with me, but didn't as I suspect their owner would have noticed them missing. Especially as the pretty pleco to the left here for example costs around 50€ in shops.






I didn't come home empty-handed though, as there were fish, plants and other fishy stuff for sale too. I got a lovely school of 24 glowlight tetras, which should liven up a certain aquarium of mine that had mostly bottom-dwellers before.

The aquariums weren't the only thing to look at, as the garden is impressive on its own with plenty to enjoy.



Well, that's all the photos I am able to upload, as I'll fall asleep on the keyboard at any moment. Good night, internet.

Oh my, I've been tagged!

I've been tagged by Heli and need to list 7 random facts about myself. It's my first time, so be gentle. ;)


1. My first ever flight abroad was going to New Zealand for 3 months, travelling alone for 40 hours or so and changing flights 3 times along the way. That's what love does to you. ;) During this trip most people spoke German at me for some inexplicable reason (I'm Finnish), even on the Finnish plane.

2. I have an aquatic strain of bacteria named after me. (No, I didn't name it.)

3. I'm a total fish fanatic. At this moment I have 6 aquariums, two of which are still at my parents' place because they won't fit into our (hubby and I) apartment. At best (or worst, depending on who you ask) I had 8 of them.

4. I've been knitting since I was, well, tiny. I don't even remember when I started, but I know I was too young to read patterns so I just made up my own creatures. There's a huge collection of them now.

5. I'm 168 cm tall (that's about 5'6''), which is pretty much average for a woman around here, I believe. However, I grew up in a family where even my little brother is 30 cm (1 foot) taller than me, so I think of myself as really tiny.

6. One of my mother's nicknames for me is Garfield, because growing up I was always in a horribly grumpy mood in the mornings before my huge cup of morning coffee and I loved lasagna. This behaviour hasn't changed over the years.

7. I love to relax by playing a good computer or video game. I once made a list of completed games, in a sad attempt to find out just how nerdy I am, and the number was 47, with another 50 or so I had played but not yet finished. Our bookshelf has almost as many games as it has books.


So there you have it. I thought it appropriate to post a picture of me (sans head, though, cause I'm shy), although it was mostly to show a purple sweater I found while tidying my clothes closet. I made it a couple of years ago from a wool blend, making it up as I went along, then forgot I had it during the summer. One good thing about having a useless memory (there's fact 8 for you) is that you find fun surprises like these!

Aaaaaaanyway, while you ponder all these deep, dark secrets of mine, go and browse through Heli's shop, because it's awesome!

Lastly, here's the rules of the game for those I tagged in turn:
1. Link to your tagger and post these rules.
2. Share 7 facts about yourself: some random, some weird.
3. Tag 7 people at the end of your post and list their names (linking to them).
4. Let them know they've been tagged by leaving a comment at their blogs.

And here's the people I have tagged in turn, I hope you want to play!

1. Prairie Daisy Handspun
2. dalinda
3. Mrs. Kwitty
4. Star of the East
5. Pamela Angus
6. La Pomme
7. Paper Flower Girl