Callousness

Anand Giridharadas in India Calling on why its so easy to harden yourself to the misery around you

"The dependency scares you, as a needy lover's demands scare you, for it suggests a bottomless pit of giving that will devour you if you give in just slightly and allow yourself to care."

Orson Scott Card: The Homecoming Series

Long, preachy, repetitive and unsatisfying. A shadow of Ender.

I just finished reading the The Homecoming Saga by Orson Scott Card. It consists of 5 books, and is a bit preachy and biblical. Biblical should not be surprising as the books is heavily influenced by the Book of Mormon. The story is set in far future on a planet called Harmony. The humans on earth had killed each other some 40 million ago and made the planet inhabitable. The last remnant humans had migrated to Harmony, and set up a computer, called Oversoul, to rule over them, and make sure they do not kill each other again. The computer rules by making people stupid when they think of some technologies that might lead to planet wide wars. Its an interesting thought, the community has computers but no wheels. By all accounts, it was a good idea, humans on Harmony have lasted 40 million years, while humans on Earth only lasted 8000. In any case, the computer is now wearing down, and wants to go back to Earth, and recruits a family to make this happen.

The plot of the story revolves on the members of this family, some are "good", and some are "evil", and continuously working against each other and trying to subvert the will of the Oversoul. This is the theme through the 5 books, how the evil stays evil and and tries to subvert the good, and how good prevails against. There is an interesting twist provided by "Keeper of the Earth" which is like oversoul, but on Earth, and an order of magnitude more powerful. The first four books deal with the original family, and the recurring theme is the repeated cycle of jealousy and anger and bitterness, yes I get it that people are bad, I really do not need four books to get the point. The fifth promises to be more interesting, since the Keeper of the Earth is putting humanity to a final test, but the final denouement left me unsatisfied. Yes it solved the immediate crisis, but there was no lasting change to humanity, nothing to indicate that humanity can live in harmony for next 40 million (or even 100 years) in peace.

The series is classic Card. It has a lot of themes from the Enders saga. The same all powerful God-like computer, the nature of God, human will, control. How is a genetic change that makes you susceptible to commands of a computer any different from the same behavior caused by an innate faith in God. I just wish he made his point in three books rather than five.

Picture of the Day

Nikhil & Shailja's Aquarium

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