Ben's Blog

I did a fairly major rework of the aquarium last Thursday. I tried my hand at terracing in the back right corner, and moved all my Bacopa and Ludwigia over there. I added a Red Crypt and a Pygmy Chain Sword as foreground plants, and a piece of Sawhala wood in the center [...]

I added a 55 watt light kit to my aquarium tonight. Here are before and after pictures. Both pictures are taken at 1/15th of a second at F2:

Before: Stock 36 watt (2 x 18w T-8 bulbs) lighting.
After: 36 watts + new 55 watt kit = 91 watts!

Last Thursday, I bought a pair of Dwarf Puffers for the aquarium. These fish are specialists at eating snails. Right now they’re less than 1/2 inch long (the snail in the picture below is the size of a pea), and they only seem to bother the really small snails. They will grow [...]

Our Dwarf Gourami died Friday afternoon:

It was in the hospital tank twice in the past with the same disease that killed Baxter, our Siamese Fighting Fish.

The Dwarf Gourami was almost DOA from the pet shop. They pack each fish in a plastic bag, then put the bags into a paper bag. The paper [...]

Baxter, our Siamese Fighting Fish, died today:

Baxter was our only named fish – Trish bought him back in February for “fish week” when she was the director of The Goddard School. Hopefully we can find a similarly colored one before Mechel wisens up….

Check out our Aquarium page for more on the aquarium (I created [...]