Aquarium Gardening Notes

Downsizing my Aquarium Setups

    I've been very quiet this year. I've not posted on the health and status of my aquariums. Many changes have occurred buy mainly, I've downsized my setup to one aquarium. The larger 35 gallon is the only tank still running now.

    An explanation: When it comes to hobbies, I am not constant. I tend to leave them for a while and come back to them later. I have several projects on the go. I collect stamps. I like to grow aquarium plants. I garden by the square foot. I collect vintage home computers and hope to rebuild one some day, from scratch. I also like to develop websites. See my links page for some of the websites I maintain. Combine all this with work, a family life, a desire to breath fresh air ... and before long, I just end up not wanting to clean, trim, maintain three or four planted aquariums. Perhaps I'm just too lazy for that. Perhaps I don't have the talent or know-how to build an aquarium that maintains itself. Does that exist? My cousin says I should have passion. I just want enjoyment out of my hobbies. I don't want them to have a hold on me.

    I still grow a couple of very hardy aquarium classics such as vals and crypts. The varieties I have seem to do well under ordinary aquarium lighting with minimal maintenance.

    However, there's a newcomer to my setup. Aquarium gardeners will hate me for this: Plastic. Yes, I've added plastic plants to my tank during the last cleaning. I like the cartoon-ish colors of plastic decorations. They are easy to replace and don't need trimming. This accommodates me while I concentrate on my vegetable garden!

    What will become of this blog? I intend to continue posting about the products I use, the parameters of my tank, the fish, and anything else I change on the setup. I also have photos from years in the hobby. I'll upload some of them. I will also add posts about my back yard garden. This year, instead of gardening on the ground, I created a large box on legs (shown in picture), the height of a table. It's been extremely fun to watch this grow, not to mention, easy to weed.

Milwaukee Aquarium Society

The Milwaukee Aquarium Society is having its Fish-O-Rama Spring Swap Meet Sunday, May 3, 2009 from 10 AM to 2 PM.

Bring your family out to the Milwaukee area Sunday. The Fish-O-Ramas are fun events if you're into aquarium hobbies.

For more information, visit the aquarium society's website. www.milwaukeeaquariumsociety.com

FISH-O-RAMA

The Milwaukee Aquarium Society is having its fall swap meet FISH-O-RAMA Sunday, November 2, 2008 from 10:00 AM to 2:00 PM.

This event is located at the
New Berlin Bowl
16000 W. Cleveland Ave.
New Berlin, WI

The admission fee is 2$ per person, or 5$ per family.


I heard about the Milwaukee Aquarium Society last year at a Madison Aquarium Gardeners' Club meeting at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. I later attended one of their auctions and really enjoyed it. I probably won't attend the FISH-O-RAMA this year as I am busy with other projects.

The FISH-O-RAMA could also be a great way to swap your aquarium surplus. Contact the Milwaukee Aquarium Society for more information on how to reserve a vendor table.

Other Hobbies

I'm still a very avid freshwater aquarium gardener. I pay special attention to my aquariums every day and continue to add plants whenever I have a chance. However, I have not posted on these activities all summer.

At the moment, I am especially busy with another hobby of mine: Retro-computers. To be more precise, I am currently working on a project to build an Amiga 1000 from scratch. Yes, from scratch, meaning that I will populate the bare PCB with all the necessary chips and parts. I see this as a challenging project since some of the parts may be difficult to obtain and also due to the surface mount soldering needed. I was once trained for SMT while working at DEC, but it's been many moons since I've even touched an iron.

The Amiga 1000 computer was a popular home computer in the mid 1980s. It was built by Commodore, the same company that made the extremely popular Commodore 64.

The idea of building one from scratch came from a project developed by Georg Braun. Georg designed a new motherboard for the Amiga known as the GB A1000. Several individuals on Amiga forums such as Amiga.org expressed the desire for Georg's GB A1000.

After some valiant coordination, a series of these boards are being manufactured. We are now waiting to receive our empty boards, gathering as much knowledge as possible in preparation for the work.

I do not have a photo of the bare PCB yet. These are being manufactured. At the moment, I am busy building the website for the project. If you want to learn more about building a GB A1000, visit www.gba1000.info.

The Quiet Aquarist

From time to time, I quit writing altogether. I do not lack in things to write about, I just loose interest momentarily. This is phase. I tend to gravitate away from my hobbies from time to time and come back to them after a while.

I continue to maintain my freshwater planted aquariums, feed the fish, trim the plants, but I am currently not interested in writing about this subject. This is how it is with me.

At any rate, summer is here and there's plenty to do outside. I'll probably be back in a few weeks. Hope my articles have been useful to some. Get yourself outside for some fresh air. Enjoy the sunshine. Thanks for visiting.

Rex's Planted Tank Guide

Stumbled onto a good source of information for planted aquariums. Check out Rex's Planted Tank Guide, especially the page related to nutrients.

Rex's blog has good articles on lighting, water chemistry, CO2, nutrients, hardware, substrates and many other things related to freshwater planted aquariums.

Well...There's also a fruitcake recipe.

AquaBanners - Advertise your Aquarium Website for Free

For those of you who have a website about fish, aquariums, aquarium plants and so forth, there is a banner exchange service dedicated to aquaria. If you wish to promote your site, please give aquabanners.com a try. I am not affiliated with this site. I'm simply a hobbyist who has become a member and wish to let my readers know about the aquabanners service.

Here's more information on aquabanners.com:

AquaBanners.com is a banner network designed to help aquarium-oriented websites with limited or no advertising budget earn free advertising/promotion for their website to a target audience of the aquarium hobbyist online!

About AquaBanners.com
AquaBanners.com is a free public service designed to help aquarium related web sites advertise each other. The concept is simple: by joining, you agree to display advertising banners for other members, and they agree to display banners for you. You can decide what type of sites to advertise on and advertise for so you don't need to worry about inappropriate material showing up on your pages.