And I’m going to have to go pump shopping tomorrow—oh, not the big guy that would be a serious ouch! but the little one that runs the auto-topoff on the marine tank. Getting a cheap pump that can take the abrasion of the calcium powder in the auto-topoff reservoir is just about down to a Maxijet 1200, which is fortunately easy to find. And this time I’m going to go look at irrigation drip line at Lowes and see if I can get a nice set of delivery hoses scaled down to fit the 1200. Problem is, the 1200’s output is 3/4″ and the hose really should come down to a 1/4″ aperture at the delivery end—without clogging from the calcium. Replicating the ocean, mind, is not easy.
Meanwhile the outdoor pond is starting to warm up definitively: once it hits 58 degrees we’ll have hungry fishes. The water is, yes, army green. But I can fix that in about 5-6 hours: step one, drain the pond down to the point the fish are getting antsy. Refill with clean water. I need to test the temperature of our tapwater to know what I’ll be putting in versus what’s there now. And then while the water’s down and filling, we install the main pump. Draining the pond is not a given. I’m going to see what I can find in spa hose, so I can use the pond vac to do it, hands-off. I just set it to run and it’ll slowly empty the water. Or I can use a small marine pump to start a siphon (I’m sure not starting it by mouth!) with the garden hose and just let it drain by siphon, which is about as fast.
Then once it’s filled, I add dechlorinator, then an algae killer, as we have the main pump now to aerate the daylights out of it. And that will drop the remnant of algae to the bottom. Step two, two days on, I add sludge remover. And if I get cladella (string algae) later, I add the Interpet formula. La! I think I have gotten this figured. It was crystal clear last year, and most of the winter. The fact the algae is growing apace means it’s waking up. The fish will poke about eating the algae at first, but that’s practically zero food value. Then they’ll really wake up and want some nice pellet.
Snails? Bottom feeders?
No snails in this pond. We do have microworms, however, which will start up when it warms. Tubifex worms, likely.
Both rat and I had fish when we were younger. I would love to have a fish or two but since he and his brother were deep into it as teens he has no inclination whatsoever to have a fish in the house ever again.
And now for something completely different:
I am 85% percent through “Foreigner” (love it!, but will eventually need some direction on where to find images of characters and creatures), went out to Amazon to get “Invader” and Inheritor” for my Kindle and they didn’t have it for the device. I clicked on the button to ‘ask for this book in Kindle’ but since I am not going to wait for that, I ended up buying used copies of all the Arc One Trilogy books. I also got the “The Morgaine Saga” so I know what happens after the graphic novels!
When I have a minute, I am going back to Amazon and repeatedly request all the series not on Kindle so I can have the collection in one place.
Until they come in, I will read “Deliberations”. 🙂
Ah, I have had both marine and freshwater fish, and find marine corals actually the least work, surprisingly. Freshwater fish poo faster than the natural systems can process it, and if you have plants, many fish rip them up so they float about: not for me the beautiful systems with moss emulating grass, waterfalls (actually cycling sand) and miniature landscapes: those people must do nothing BUT their tanks, unless there are magics I wot not of. Marine fishes are prone to just as much attitude and just as many problems as their freshwater cousins, unless you get the very small species that are at home in a reef. And that’s my preference. Corals don’t get uprooted, they’re not plants, they’re self-feeding from sunlight, kalk and fish poo, and a proper tank doesn’t need anything but a topoff reservoir with kalk powder tossed into it. I feed my tank a few times a week, I have a very bright metal halide that provides light, and the 32 gallon reservoir supplies calcium and fresh water to make up for the gallon a day that evaporates (1/80th the water in the system.) Since calcium comes in with the fresh water, it’s taken care of. The corals photosynthesize for the rest; and the fish poo…that’s the growth factor. The little fishes behave themselves, don’t fight, don’t destroy things, and the kalk has to be replenished every few months…BUT…getting a tank balanced in the first place can be a bit of a learning curve. I’m active on a reef forum and spend a lot of time trying to tell new hobbyists how to get set up.
Glad you’re enjoying Foreigner. Both Whelan and Todd Lockwood consulted with me on dress and critters, so they’re pretty accurate. They’ve tended to use African-ancestry models, which is, you know, easier than phoning the atevi and asking them to send a representative…They do get the scale right, which is a bit of a trick; and the only thing I would say is that atevi faces are a little different, and their body proportions are broader in the shoulders, narrow in the hips (think of a basketball type)
Thanks!
I DO know (after dhawktx’s general character outlines (Bren, Banichi and Jago) a few weeks before I started reading) the atevi do NOT have pointed ears. The things you learn while sanding doll eye holes larger!
I went looking at covers to find mecheiti and saw what is probably two on the #3 cover. Boy, was I off! I went off on an extremely mutated wooly mammoth direction. Derp.
I like the name Banichi. It would be a good doll character name.
ばんいち
1. (n) emergency; unlikely event
2. (adv) by some chance; by some possibility
I have two layaway human-shaped bjds who fell on me by chance and were unlikely events, but they happened. One is a tiny Asian-face-sculpt girl and one is mid-sized adult male. I don’t know if either will claim the name or if it will go into the name dump until someone comes along who claims it. Perhaps one of my anthros will want to be painted black and have yellow eyes. Who knows?
The mechieti are rather camel-like, but a little snakier, meaner, and omnivorous, with horse-like fur, ie, quite short in summer. The rooting tusks are nasty weapons in a dispute for herd rights, and atevi made them worse in war by capping them with sharp bronze. That’s what they mean by ‘war caps’. The armor is (if the fancy sort) cloisonnee, both rider and beast, and was at least reminiscent of samurai-style armor: it was plates laced together or joined by rings. Remember the feet are clawed, and how sharp those are—(pity the atevi equivalent of a horseshoee, whose job is tending the claws)—depends on the use.
[pedant]horseshoee = farrier[/pedant] 😀 Probably more like trimming a cheetah’s claws, which are not retractable. Were mechieti trained like warhorses in trample or kick as well? Claws instead of hooves could do some nasty, nasty damage.
THat were horseshoer, but farrier is actually the word my tired mind couldn’t rake up. 😉 That’s hoss-shoer in Oklahoma, but they’d rather be farriers.
The claws are not retractable, and remember these are omnivores—ie, they hunt small animals as well as eat grasses…herd-leader gets most of the animal protein. They’re clever at moving rock to get at some prizes. They don’t kick well, but they are fairly agile, naturally head-butt, bite, and gore with tusks, and break necks rather like a giraffe-fight; whatever is on the ground in reach of their feet is toast: their (front) digging feet can really make a mess of an enemy, and their rear feet, also clawed, can get into the action. Training mostly consists in using the animal’s instincts—and getting the herd leader under control: if you’ve got the leader, the rest will be controllable; and all you need to do is get the jaw rein on (good luck) and get a saddle on. They don’t buck, but will reach back and bite. The quirt is your defense and your direction: they move away from a touch of the quirt, will circle to try to throw you off, and throw their heads and try to get a piece of your foot or anything else they can reach, rake you off on a post or rock or wall, or generally make your life miserable. OTOH, they do grow more cooperative as food reward follow a session under saddle, (they particularly favor jerky as bribes) and once you have the herd-leader relatively civilized, you can take the liberties the grooms take—armed with a quirt, constantly. Herd members are sneaky, quite smart, and may try a flank attack or try to crowd you into a wall, just to see if they can: activity in the herd is a constant war of ‘trying’ one’s boundaries, ‘trying’ the pecking order. Use of the quirt is your defense.
If I am recalling properly, there is a scene where the mechieti literally tear someone apart. I’m pretty sure that has to do with claws in conjunction with tusks. It would make sense to be able to claw apart roots which were to large to eat whole.