small cypress

a fishkeeping post (mostly)

I've been keeping at least two or three fish tanks going for about six years, and found myself with some losses this spring that made me cool on the hobby for a bit. My goldfish passed - one from ich brought on by big temperature swings and one from predation. I am gutted and I won't be keeping them outdoors at all with the drastic temperature changes.

My betta also passed very suddenly, and I have no idea why. Not knowing is troubling, because I am pretty particular aabout my husbandry practices.

Medaka

This left me with my shukogyoku medaka, or japanese ricefish. Shukogyoku is a tricolor variety, but they come in lots of colors and varities. Mine came from a local breeder on R/Aquaswap, and I picked them up in a gas station parking lot.

Medaka are generally appropriate to keep outdoors year round without filters or aeration - with some exceptions. They are kept on patios in Japan and Southeast Asia and eat mosquito larvae.

I have had them for awhile now, and they're very different than other fish I've kept. They aren't schooling fish but feel like them somehow - not like the goofy personalities of our goldfish or the drama of my betta. I miss that level of personality.

What I miss in personality I am making up in EGGS. Those ugly foam circles are spawning mops, and I have about 8 shukogyoku fry growing out and five more eggs waiting to hatch. I also ordered about twenty-five miyuki blue eggs from eBay (I am a person ordering fish eggs off ebay!!!!) that arrived today.

It's been good. I still have my empty goldfish pond going, and will add in medaka once they are old enough to survive a winter. My betta tank stands empty, I might just winter young medaka in that one.

Walstad bowl

I found this bowl at a by-the-pound Goodwill outlet. It's a bit wonky but thick and secure enough to handle a 2.5 gallon Walstad tank, entirely from rocks, soil, sand, plants, and a light I already had on me.

Since my first tank in 2020 I've loosely followed a watered-down version of Diana's method - potting soil covered with sand or gravel, a lot of fast-growing stem plants and no added C02. What I haven't done was follow her instructions start-to-finish on her small shrimp bowls, which I was able to do after she made a rare YouTube appearance to do a walkthrough (not my favorite channel but for petty reasons)

I found this video fascinating - to see someone who does YouTube in the kind of commercial, professionalized way people treat the platform now was interviewing someone who is not just older, but seems much more culturally offline. She's not going through any motions, just so open and so genuine.

It's also refreshing to hear her talk about her method and how loose and forgiving she's found it to be. Reddit would have you believe that there is Only One True Potting Soil and that Ms. Walstad would smite you for using a filter or changing water - two things she does herself from time to time. Animal groups can become so fundamentalist so quickly.

This bowl will also be for growing medaka in the near term. I have two varieties that need to be separated, as well as the differently-sized fry so they won't eat each other.

Quilt

I am using this darkly anonymous youtube video to make a pillow cover. I think I'll try this pattern for a wall-hanging above my bed, but I want to see if it's fun to make on a smaller scale first.

Jury Duty

I have been on a jury for a full week and it is still not over. There's not much I can say beyond the fact that that is very long for a trial. Being on a jury is a wild experience. We are shuffled in and out of the court rooms in single file lines, stuck in a big room together with one outlet to charge anything, and we can talk about anything at all except the one thing we are all experiencing together.

We've been doing puzzles together in our downtime. It helps bide the time and find something to talk about besides The Thing.