Category Archives: House

No leaks! Happy days!

Early settlers.

I dropped in to Aquaristic today (I now live next door to one of the best small aquarium shops in Sydney) to buy some dechlorinator. Not so surprisingly (as Aquaristic tend to sell some really special things) they had one single red rice fish! I passed on the fish for now but I did pick up 2 banana leaves (free-floating, no stems, the roots sprout out from directly under the leaf itself). They only had a few and these were the only 2 in decent condition (they were the biggest ones too). The guy who looked after me said they will flower if they get full sun.

My Queen Anthurium has pushed out a new leaf and it’s beautiful!

In love with my Watermelon Peperomia. Not only because the leaves look like watermelons, but they sparkle in the sun!

75mm wide x 40mm deep fibreglass pot from Bunnings (holds 176L which is massive!). Came with a drainage hole unfortunately so I had to make it watertight with some 2 part epoxy.

I often think about setting up another aquarium, but then I think about the maintenance (cleaning algae off the glass daily and weekly water changes) and all the livestock I’ve killed over the years. These thoughts have usually been enough to keep my want for another aquarium at bay, but I’m super into growing plants right now and I’ve spent some time looking into terrariums, which then led to looking at paludariums as well as ponds.

Since I’m starting to work on setting up my rooftop I started looking into ponds a little more. Whilst I’m still put off by having to do weekly water changes I stumbled upon Japanese Rice Fish (Medaka) and how many Japanese keep them outdoors in small ceramic pots without filters or heaters all year round (with no water changes!).

The more research I did the more I’ve found that these little fish are perhaps the hardiest fish out there (and I think they’re beautiful!). They’re found in rice fields, and have been kept by the Japanese since the 17th century. They can tolerate temperatures form as low as 3 °C to as high as 42 °C (nuts!) and pH levels from 6.5 through to 8.0 (basically they can live in fresh or salt water, again… nuts!).

A low-tech pond sounds like a really fun project so I dropped in to Bunnings this morning and picked up a huge plant pot and some epoxy to fill up the drainage hole. I’ve made an online order for some pond plants and some rice fish too. I’m excited!