Right Brain Feed

 I like to automate things on my fish tank, and decided I wanted to automate fertilizing my aquarium plants. That led me to the seedy underworld of dosing pumps. I really wanted to stick with a simple straightforward...and cheap one. A dosing pump is connected on one end thru tubing to a liquid fertilizer, and the other end pushes a few ml a day of the plant fertilizer over the edge of the tank into the water.   I got a Jebao DP-4, and tried a couple of things to get it to work. Warning: unless you are fiddling with aquarium doing pumps, the rest of this post will be a snoozefest. I found complaints online that the DP-4 dosing pump leaked air into the line, meaning that it would dose inaccurately. So I bought slightly small silicone tubing thinking it would make a better seal. It didn't. It both leaked in air, and the silicone tubing I got was even pulling air in thru the silicone walls! I didn't realize silicone tubing could be semipermeable like that. So I got airline t...

 I’m trying to learn the art of being patient…. It’s a challenge. Two months into my new tank setup, fish and some plants seem happy. I’ve added some really fun fish: a herd of a dozen lambchop rasboras, two marigold swordfish, three orange platys. I still have a few aging black skirt tetras, and an ancient zebra danio that will outlive us all. I also got some Nerite snails, which are doing a decent job of eating algea bits. Here’s a current photo: And here’s how it looked two months ago: I removed some of the messier plants that were in my initial Darwin in Action post. I find some (most?) stem plants need very very regular pruning and primping, and so I’ve really got to love them to keep them. Two remaining stem plants are probably not going to make the cut, but for now I’m keeping them as the plants grow in. I’ve ordered a few new plants to try, which arrive in the next two days.  Tank setup: 55 gallon Lights: 2 Nicrew planted LEDs at 50% intensity on for 8 hours a day Unde...