Panda Cory and Dwarf Gourami

Aquarium seems to be maturing pretty good. Ammonia/Nitrite levels are all zero. I discovered 5 snails today, they seem to be growing pretty fast, though with very thin shells. Harlequin Rasboras laid some eggs, but they all disappeared couple of days later. Aquarium is started to get run over by algae. This happened because I delayed adding the cleaner fishes for so long. The two Otocinclus that I added on Sunday are valiantly trying to clean it up.

So today we decided to add some more fishes to our aquarium. Shailja does not like Otocinclus much so we are not adding more of those. I used to have Cory cats, and enjoyed them so we decided to get one of the varieties of these. Our local pet store had a bunch of different kinds, and we settled on Panda Corydoras since they seemed most active and comical. As a plus they were the smallest, and in general I prefer getting small fishes and watching them grow. We got three of these. I think 5 bottom dwellers is enough for our 30G aquarium.

Panda Cory

Second fish that we got today was a Dwarf Gourami (Colisa Lalia). Only a male was available in store, I will probably add a female if I ever run into one. Its a beautiful blue and red color, and likes to hide in the plants. Its such a marked difference looking at the behavior of a "character fish" like the gourami compared to a schooling fish link the Harlequin Rasboras.

Dwarf Gourami

We are getting pretty close to fully stocking the aquarium. Current plan is to get two or three Angel Fishes and a pair of Blue Ram or Bolivian Ram or Kribensis. I am partial to Kribenses, since those were the only fishes that I have kept that had fry's in my aquarium that survived though the Rams are simply spectacular to look at.

Kribensis Mother with Fry from the old 55G aquarium.

Adding more Fishes and a Stupid mistake

So bad three days. Of the three Harlequin Rasbora that I got three days ago, two are dead. One I am sure died because it was sick when we got it. Second, I am not sure if it died because of stress - since these are schooling fish and two are too few. Or if they died due to Ammonia poisoning. Ammonia tests showed very slight level of Ammonia, less than the lowest level the kit was designed to measure.

I suspected stress as the cause of death. The two fishes seemed scared and not at all at home in the aquarium, so today I decided to get 4 more of them to make the remaining one feel more at home. It seemed to go well, all 5 are now together and so much more active than before.

Now the stupid part. I also saw that all the plants were showing signs of dying, lots of leaves turning brown. I think this is because there is not enough nitrate in the water, so they are starving. The plant food only contains Potassium since Phosphorus and Nitrates come from waste. A new aquarium does not have waste. So I decided to add a little bit of 20-20-20 orchid fertilizer to the water. Bad Bad idea, ammonia shot up to 2 ppm. This is really bad for the fishes. I changed about 12 gallons of water. Lets see if they survive the night. At least for now, they seem to be happily swimming around.

Harlequin Rasbora

First fishes - Harlequin Rasboras

Its time! It's 9 days since I first poured water in the tank and Ammonia/Nitrite levels are both zero. I put some fish food and other junk in the aquarium so that it can rot and produce Ammonia, but since the levels are still stuck at zero, I think the cycling is complete. I am not sure because usually these levels shoot up before returning to zero. May be the Fluorite gravel already had a colony of bacteria (it was wet at least).

In anycase, we decided to get our first fishes today. First fish in are going to be a schooling fish. Schooling fish in general do not have individual personality, and I personally do not find them very interesting to watch. They are still good to have as they add a lot of motion to the tank, and they also help other fishes to feel more comfortable. Local Petsmart/Petco did not have many options, the standard tetras and barbs. I used to have neon tetras before, and wanted something different this time. One interesting fish was Threadfin Rainbow. The problem with all rainbows is that they usually show there colors only when water quality is excellent and they are extremely comfortable. In stores, they are usually too stressed out are are quite dull. They looked dull in the shop, and Shailja wanted color and we settled on Harlequin Rasboara. I wanted to get 6 of these, but the Petsmart fish guy convinced us that since we have a new tank, we should only get 2 and not 6. I did not like that idea too much since these fishes are supposed to be schooling fish and must be kept in large groups. We settled on 3 with reservations.

I was right, and three was too few. When we got home, one of the fish seemed sick, it hung out near the very top separate from the other two. The other two were usually together but looked stressed out, hiding in the plants or behind rocks and trying to remain stationary. Two of them died over the next few days

Harlequin Rasboras

First Plants and Fish stock planning

Finally the replacement bulb arrived. Kudos to Big Al's Online for great customer service and hassle free shipping of replacement bulb. Now that we have the lighting, its time to add the first plants. LFS (Petsmart/Petco) do not have much of a selection. Also they tend to sell off terrarium plants as aquarium plants (bamboo!!?). Anyway, the only two options that they had were Green Cobomba and Egeria Densa (Anacharis). We also got a pack of assorted plant bulbs.

Its also time to start planning the fishes. Aquariums have three distinct habitation zones. Bottom, middle, top. For all practical purposes, fishes living in one of these zones will rarely interact with fishes in any of the other zones. Number of fishes depends on the biological capacity of the aquarium, which depends on number of plans, kinds of fishes, how frequent and how big the water changes are, etc. Basically how much shit the aquarium can breakdown and process without turning the water toxic.

For Bottom dwellers we plan to have a few Otos and Corydoras. Otos are nocturnal and Corys are diurnal, so its nice to have 24/7 cleaning crew. For the middle region I used to have Kribensis before and might get those. Another good option is Bolivian Ram or Blue Ram. All three are varieties of small peaceful chichlids. They are good parents, and take care of their fry and so are very fun to watch. Rainbow shark is also a bottom-lower level fish that I want to keep. Its slightly aggressive and territorial so iffy if it can live with the Krib/Ram.

For the top level, we will have a couple of Angel fishes as centerpiece fish, and a school of small tetras or barbs. Its nice that both of these varieties almost never go towards the bottom of the tank, so you do not have to worry too much about how they will interact with the bottom dwellers. From what I have heard, I can keep at most 3 Angels in my 30G tank. But interestingly enough Takashi Amano has some tanks in his book which are sized about 30G but with 10 Angels. That seems wrong, but then who am I to question Takashi Amano.

A good place to start the research on your stocking is at AquaHobby.com and FishProfiles.com

Setting Up a New Aquarium

I used to keep a 55 gallon aquarium many years ago. Here is an old photo from Oct 2004.

55G Aquarium from Oct 2004

I had this aquarium till about 2006 when I had to move, and could not take the aquarium with me. Aquariums are very different from other pets that people keep. You are not attached so much to an individual fish, but to the aquarium as a whole. An aquarium is a complete living system which as a whole is healthy and happy, or sick and sad. As a fish keeper, your goal is to keep the aquarium, the ecosystem, healthy, not so much an individual fish. As such, an individual fish dying occasionally is expected and not too distressing. What is extremely distressing is a mass death or mass sickness of fishes in your care, because that signals that the system as a whole has crashed and that is terrible.

Anyway, after a four year hiatus, I have decided to keep an aquarium once again. I intend to keep a log of its progress in this blog. The posts will be backdated to track the progress of the aquarium. All posts will get tagged with aquarium.

Long Walk To Freedom: The Autobiography of Nelson Mandela

Just finished reading this excellent book. In Indian minds African anti-apartheid struggle has a special place, because it was in South Africa that Mahatma Gandhi first experienced the injustice of colonialism and took his first steps towards fighting against it. As an Indian, we were always taught that this was an important incident in both South African and Indian history. From reading this book, apparently not so for South Africa. It may have been a transformational moment for Mahatma Gandhi, but not for African National Conference. In fact, at least Mr. Mandela was slightly anti-Indian in his early attitudes, fearing that they would usurp the blacks in the African freedom struggle.

Something else that I liked about the book was the detailed descriptions of how the non-white Africans were repressed in day to day lives. The book gives great insight into how an organization like ANC works, the nitti-gritty of the day to day management and organization of protests and rallies. This was a contrast from the Indian independence books and histories. Looking back, I do not really know exactly how the British repressed Indians. We all know of the few big highlights, like Jalllianwala Bagh massacre, but not so much about day to day lives of Indians under British rule. Also missing is the organizational details of Congress. We all know how Gandhi launched the Quit India Movement, but we have no idea, how the message was conveyed to all the people all over India about the movement in absence of 24 hour news channels.

Long Walk To Freedom is rich in all these details, the shocking and unbelievable attitude of Afrikaners (the white ruling class of South Africa) towards blacks and repression, till so late in 20th century when it seemed all the rest of the world had left these things so far behind. Given all this, its even more amazing that Mr. Mandela espoused reconciliation with the former oppressors, and was even successful at it.

The book is also very personal, and traces the personal growth of Mr Mandela from a fiery youth who cared more about who got credit for a campaign rather than the results, to the great selfless statesman that the world knows now. From the person who started the military arm of ANC and was its first commander in chief, to the noble peace prize winning first president on South Africa responsible for the only country in Africa to peacefully integrate former colonist into the new black dominated order.

Overall a very educational book.

Book Review – Freefall: America, Free Markets, and the Sinking of the World Economy

I decided to read Freefall (by Joseph Stiglitz) after seeing a talk by the author. In the book Stiglitz promises to peel back the layers of causes responsible for the recent financial market collapse. When asked why the collapse happened most people will respond by saying banks were giving out mortgages to people who could not pay back. But Why? Because the incentives of the mortgage originators and bankers were flawed. But then the question is why did the market not respond to those flawed incentives and encourage firms that had the right incentive structure. Stiglitz frames the economic collapse in context of larger debate between Keynesian's and Monetarist's. His central claim is that since late 1970's Monetarist thought has been gaining the upper hand and the current crisis is the result.

The book starts off very crisply. Stiglitz invites you to listen to the story of the crisis and keeps you engaged even while going over parts of the story that you have already heard. He gives a comprehensive account of the crisis and I learned many things even though I considered my self well aware of the events. He castigates the political administrations starting from Regan's for dismantling the regulatory system which was ultimately responsible for the crisis.

While he is extremely critical of the bankers, regulators and politicians he seems to give the homeowners who took mortgages they could not afford a free pass. He never quite gets around to explaining how the american family who took the zero percent down, non recourse mortgage was the victim when they could just walk away from the home that they had no business owning in the first place. He seems to see no difference between the hardworking Americans who save for a down-payment and only buy homes they can afford and those who get the biggest house they can with nary a thought to finances.

He also latches on to ARM's as unequivocally bad and predatory which is not really true. He mentions them multiple times and faults Greenspan for encouraging them in a lecture. In an otherwise crisp and insightful narrative I felt a dissonance reading the simple minded rhetoric on ARM's. In an ARM the borrower takes on the interest rate risk and in return gets a lower cost for the loan. These mortgages are pretty common in many countries (like Canada) and they work as well as the fixed rate mortgages used to in America.

The above faults aside Stiglitz is spot on in his criticisms on how the stimulus has played out. Banks and their shareholders got too sweet a deal. He explains how all the reasons given on why banks and their shareholders are entitled the the tax payer largess are flawed. The Obama administration policies have failed to stop a crisis like this from recurring. The banks are still too big to fail, and thus enjoy the implicit government guarantees.

The only problem with the book is its length. After about half way through, I started feeling that the arguments and examples got repetitive. It felt like someone who has been ignored for years has finally been vindicated and now cannot stop saying "I told you so".

Overall, I would highly recommend the book to anyone who is interested in the financial crisis. It pairs really well with The Big Shot

OVO: The colorful world of insects

Cirque du Soleil are visiting the bay area with their show OVO. We went to a showing in San Jose, and were wow'ed by the spectacle. The show's theme is the world of insects, and all the acts are based on the life of an insect, a butterfly growing inside a pupa, coming out, spreading its wings and dying. A spider dancing on its web. Ants running up and down a vertical wall. Without going into the details of the act, they are all classic Cirque du Soleil quality.

The show starts a little slowly, but things pick up when a fly(?) comes carrying an ovo (egg) to this insect colony and falls in love with a lady bug. Follows a deep and spectacular dive into the colorful world of insects as they go about their world. We watch as red ants play with their food, juggling corn with their feet in synchrony. We watch spiders as they dance and float around on strands of their net. Towards the end there was a gravity defying act showing ants in their colony, walking up and down their ant hill taking care of the day's business. There was a lot more, but Cirque du Soleil are to be experienced, not described. We will never think of insects in the same way again.

The venue in San Jose, was a bit cramped. You probably do not want to take any eatables/drinkables in the show, as the seats are quite small without any arm rests. The audience sits in a U shape on three sides of the stage. We were sitting in the second row along the left arm of the U. The theater was not so big, so even in the last row you will get an excellent view of the stage. A small word of caution, there is trapeze act for which they hook up a big net. If you are sitting on either side of the stage the view is a bit less than perfect, but only a little bit.