spent time in the living and dining rooms reorganizing the plants…
took the orchids out of the new fish tank, trimmed, and found other places for them to go…
gave up the winerack and now have a spot for the fuchsia from outside to come to…
found a pump that might work in the tank, which is going to be used to house pond plants…
I’ve tried to overwinter water hyacinth before without success, but am going to try once again… also hoping that the two floating baskets will make it as well;-)… some of the water lilies will go into the tanks with the fish, but may put one in this tank if there is room…
spent the better part of yesterday and today working on the fish tanks… I’ve been thinking about how far I’ve come from the person who admired the tank, but had no desire to get my hands dirty… that was all for my beloved…
yesterday I used the pump (for emptying the hot tub) to remove the majority of the water that was still in them… then I removed the rocks and scrubbed down the sides… never leave a tank partly filled because the scum on the glass becomes rather difficult to remove, lol…
next I used the wet vac to remove the last of the water…
in between all that, I scrubbed each and every rock from the tanks… that took a while as I did it between reading times;-)…
rocks were placed back in, and then the hose brought in from outside to fill them up…
finally I put both pumps back in and got them working…
I have been working on the fish condo for weeks now… spent a good portion of a day cleaning the fish tank… lots of scrubbing and emptying…
I researched a second tank and we went out and got the tank and two pumps so that they were on the ends as opposed to the back of the tanks…
after numerous measurements, we set the new tank up on the counter along the North wall of the dining room… then the bottom was filled with rocks and water and the new pump set up… this tank will be for the baby fish as the other tank won’t be able to hold all of the fish…
I worked with my grandson and we were able to move the big tank to the spot beside the small tank… it looks good there and it almost appears like one single very long tank…
after putting river rocks in it, I ran the hose from the outside tap through the house and was able to fill it up in nine minutes… it probably took me that long to fill the small one as I used a pail and walked back and forth to the kitchen sink for that one, lol…
had a bit of an issue with the pump as there wasn’t quite enough room in the large tank for it on the edge, but we were able to remove a piece of plastic and now it fits perfectly…
once the water was in and circulating for a few days we began catching the fish… we have been at it for quite a while… we started on October 22nd and today I think we caught the last one… I had to break ice for the last few collections, lol…
it was quite a process because since about the middle of October the water has been brown as leaves have fallen into it so it has made spotting fish difficult…
we also brought in some of the water lilies, which hopefully will survive until next spring when they can go back into the pond…
the tanks look great and I am pleased with all of our work…
ugh… not my favourite job, but we’ve decided that this needs to happen monthly…
I am feeding the fish twice a day to be sure they are getting enough to eat… they are quite big now, lol…
that means that the tank can get murky and it felt like that was happening… as time goes on, I should be able to get the feeding down so that there isn’t excess food in the water…
a bit of a balancing act… it seemed to be getting clearer…
I also put some shelf liner behind the tank to see if I like how it looks…
the water pumping into the tank doesn’t seem to be flowing probably and I can’t figure out why, sigh…
yesterday I took down the liner as it blocked the light… and I changed out two of the three parts of the filter for new pieces because the tank is not clearing up…
can’t decide today if it has improved or not… will see what happens in the next few days, sigh…
after the boys left yesterday, I brought in the plants which they had removed from the pond…
took a while, but eventually I got them all into the tank in a way that made me happy, although the tank looks very full…
not sure if they will last the winter, but it is worth a try as they are expensive and the lilies produced a number of blooms which doesn’t always happen, lol…
once the two pails of fish were in the house, I waited for a number of hours so that they could acclimate to the water temperature in the house…
when I finally poured them into the tank most of them did fine… but one of the biggest ones got stuck between a plant and rock and didn’t seem to be able to get out from the spot… I was very worried and it took about half an hour before it moved out from the tight space…
today they seem happy, but maybe a little crowded;-)…
and I enjoyed having company to talk to throughout the day;-)…
three days ago I unplugged the pump on the fish tank as I was on a Zoom call and it was very noisy… I have often done this…
when I plugged it back in, nothing happened… I tried different outlets to no avail…
I decided to put the fish into the pond but had to do some cleaning of it first… got some done, but hurt my back so waited a bit…
they seemed fine while waiting… in the middle of the night it occurred to me that one of the smaller pond pumps might work in the tank…
first thing this morning I was out in the garage finding a pump… brought it in, tested it in the sink and put it into the tank… think it is going to work in the meantime…
the water is murky, which will not likely clear up as currently there is no filter… the fish seem to be swimming about and appear much happier… this pump is even noisier than the last one, lol…
unfortunately, the biggest fish died during the night;-(…
herbiggirlpants 