Hung out with one of my faves today, young Kristi Jade Mclellan
We talked shit, it was deep as usual, after I got talking about me we talked about her. When I met K-POP 7 years ago I dropped a bomb of a question on her (thinking it would impress her): “So, what do you dream of when you put your head on the pillow at night?”, she answered without hesitation.
She wanted to be an Art Therapist.
For years I’ve been urging her to chase her dreams, but today we both had energy, we both bounced off each other, as good friends should. We decided to look up the word THERAPY. The dictionary reads:
“treatment intended to relieve or heal a disorder”.
YUCK! What negativity! No wonder she’s had little to no luck getting her business off the ground. Sometimes you have to scrap pre-existing definitions and start your own. Here’s to Kristi’s journey to success. I’m in for the ride!
Not only have I got a new shelf waterproof shelf to put the tank on, I’ve also got a powerpoint so I don’t have to run ugly cables around the wall to where the power is.
You can see in this picture where the power cables used to have to wrap around to get to power (frag tank used to sit on that bench with toys on it now).
And a little phone vid for now.
My house is falling apart, literally. I had a handyman over recently to fix up a few things in the house and whilst I had him I thought I’d FINALLY move the tank back to where it belongs (fish tanks aren’t the cleanest things and really shouldn’t ever be in a kitchen, bad feng shui!).
Over a year ago (time flies!) the tank used to sit perfectly above the aircon vent in the lounge room. The tank leaked one night and the MDF board under the tank absorbed all the water. If I left it any longer the tank would have fallen through the aircon chute!
So Robbie was over last week and he helped me move the tank (it’s an awkward move which I did solo last time, but made a LOT easier with Robbie’s help!). Man the tank was dirty as. SO much gunk in and around the filter, salt build up all over the insides and outsides of the tank and the back wall of the aquarium hadn’t been cleaned in forever.
I’ve lost the hammers, the cat and the acan, my peppermint vanished and aiptasia has appeared (funny that). I’m also down to one turbo snail from 3 (from memory) and I can’t see any hermit crabs. The clowns are doing awesome, so too my cleaner shrimp which I never expected to live this long in my hands. The fungia is still around (makes me want more!), some zoas, the 2 nassarius snails are well, so too the huge brittle star under the rockwork. The leather is still there and he’s HUGE. He’s been closed up for ages as the finger leather next to him got so large (literally took over the tank!) that it stung the leather so bad on one side that the leather started dying so I’ve moved the finger leather to the other side next to the pump, which it doesn’t like, and now it’s 1/3rd the size and staying that way for the moment.
The star polyps have covered a whole lot of the rock which is rad, the monty is holding in there (I heard they were tough but damn they’re tough!). Xenia tends to get out of control at times, but my big water changes tend to cull it back a little, till it comes on strong again (in all sorts of strange places too, it’s now finally growing on the back glass which is what I always wanted it to do!).
I’ve spent some time cleaning up the corners of the front glass (it was a mess), but have decided to let the back wall and left wall (as its up against the wall) go for now. Looks ugly as but I have some plans in mind which might just let me leave those walls unattended, but still look good/interesting.
The Two Little Fishies NanoMag I had on the tank had rusted out so bad you wouldn’t believe. I’m sure my phosphates are through the roof! I’ve bought another one though as I’ve tried a fair few nano mag cleaners and none have been better/stronger than this one.
I’ve been doing 20 litre water changes every 3-4 months on this tank, yup, SUPER lazy. Goes to show how strong everything in the tank is (though I don’t feed heavy, never have). I’ll get water changes back up to bi-weekly at the very least. I ordered a couple of peppermint shrimp from Reef Secrets in hope that they will rid the tank of aiptasia, and I also got me a couple of turbo snails. I ordered 2 huge ones by accident, but that’s probably AOK as there’s a shit tonne of algae on the back wall!
Finally unpacking my suitcase of trinkets from my not so recent trip to Japan (yup I’m hopeless!!!). Mia wearing a Daruma collar Mum got for her on our trip.
I’ve dropped the ball on the aquariums since Koh Samui. It’s amazing how easily things go out of whack if you don’t keep up your weekly water changes! A month ago I decided to break down the Frag Tank as 3 tanks is just too much upkeep. This weekend I’m breaking down the Nuvo, and putting all corals from it into the Fluval Edge (and donating the fish back to my local fish store).
Pile it on THEN strip it back! Just another excellent example of me going too hard on shit I’m into LOL!
Mum told me a couple of days ago that Mia was going nuts! She’d lost her voice and was running up and down the stairs like mad. Funny thing is Pou my last flatmate said the same thing as I was returning from Japan last year. Rob my Zen business partner swears by it; that animals know when their masters return! I think it’s all true!
She’s been so crazy in love with me since I’ve been back! She was a lap cat before, but now she’s a cuddle monster!!!
Long time no update! Tank is doing well, but lighting is starting to become an issue. The light is so off centre/towards the back that a lot of corals are living in shade now. Now quite sure what to do about it, might just let things be.
I had a MASSIVE issue. I packed the filter in the Edge with too much media, and over the span of a day the edge leaked, and it sits on MDF board, so the entire tank almost fell through the air-conditioning chute it sits on!!! I’ve moved the tank to the kitchen bench for now and will repair the bench ASAP.
The Nuvo is doing well too. A month or so ago I noticed my 6-Line was missing. Turns out he jumped over the back wall and into the rear sump compartment of the Nuvo! Took me a while to catch him out of there! A few days later he jumped into the back section again! Smart fella?! I caught him out again, only to have him jump AGAIN so I gave in and just took off one of the spinning nuvo pump thingies, leaving a hole for hi to freely swim fro the front section of the tank to the sump (very cool!). He loved this for the past few weeks as he gets beaten up by the Dottyback, and this has relieved the issue, but 2 days ago I noticed he wasn’t coming to the front for feeding time, today I had a good look and it turns out he’s jumped out of the tank completely, fallen on the floor, then even worse fallen into the air conditioning grate under the tank (I can’t get his dried up dead corpse!).
