Friday, April 20, 2007
Feeling a little irritated - I'd love to take a nice photograph for my employment pass, but guess what? I now look like I've got a giant gobstopper in my cheek, so says Yx. Which I think is quite an understatement. =\ So yeah .. no photo-taking for now. Been getting slightly stressed up, receiving all sorts of letters (most of them re: "you need to come for this and that briefing") and reading survival guides and all that tosh. Just realised that I didn't do my Slavery-In-Progress there, so I have ABSOLUTELY no idea where things are kept, and protocols etc. Dopey, EW - I may need a little help!! I'm hoping there are phlebotomists there?
A few pics (again! Been spending my last days of rest taking photographs??)
New (but second hand) Teco chiller, taken apart to top up refrigerant. Pic taken during a test run.
The cover for the unit is on the right, which had been taken off. The one on the left is my old, finally-defeated, made-in-China chiller.
GARDEN SERIES, PART II
Control module for entire garden, run off a single tap outlet. Ahh. I wish so much that I had 2 taps, it would make my job so much easier! The white hose was the problematic one that kept bursting. Notice the ends of the white hose have those nice, lurid yellow sockets? That was the solution - which was included in the package actually, DUH. What happens is that when the timer is off, the tap is still on and therefore there's a buildup of pressure within the white hose and the yellow, horizontal thing (the 4-way diverter), and obviously the diverter can't burst so the pipe did. Great.
Green line is to the hosereel, for car/floor/human washing. And Brownie showers.
Black line is UV-resistant hose that supplies the misting etc. Big fat yellow box with knobs is the waterproof timer. Oooh talking about these - I just found out that Home Fix DIY has another brand of timers etc that look so much sweeter, I regretted this yellow stuff at once! Hah .. but heck, whatever works. Had a fly time drilling the wall to stick the diverter on. And yes, the garden wall desperately needs a fresh coat of paint.
Snow on the Sahara =) And waiting for this month's utility bill in trepidation. New chiller + burst pipes = a long talk with dad.
Current state of the garden in phase II: a dreadful mess. Doing a full repotting of every single plant. Almost done though!!
Labels: CPs, rants, reef
Wenky
7:01 AM
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Thursday, April 19, 2007
OK, I think the chiller is working. Going to monitor it today to see how often it kicks in.
But too late, 2 of my Acropora underwent RTN (rapid tissue necrosis) from the heat stress, and I also lost a very nice neon green octopus coral. Fack. I'm going to remove the ground wire later and test if there's still a current leak, and probably try to install a permanent ground - the current one is attached to the chiller at one end and poked directly and insecurely into the mains at the other (I hear my primary school science teacher saying, "You do not poke ANYTHING directly into the mains!!!!").
Off to finish up the garden. Still a wee bit (not really) left to do:
1) Finish repotting all - ALL - the CPs
2) Dump S.flava var. cuprea into the fridge for dormancy
3) Prepare S.leucophylla x oreophila for dormancy
4) Divide S. x umlauftiana
5) Extend misting system in Nepenthes area - I need 2 more misters
6) Complete irrigation circuit through the entire garden
Whoa! A lot to do! And eagerly awaiting a new N.clipeata plant a few weeks later, this one is purportedly from a totally different gene pool than the 4 usual ones from Andreas Wistuba in cultivation.
Labels: CPs, reef
Wenky
7:40 AM
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Thursday, March 29, 2007
Left: Radium bulb. This has been the case for the last few months since the bulb on the right side blew, so only half the tank's lit up.
2 minutes: Yellowish tint from the bulbs during the initial phase of firing up.
5 minutes: Starting to blue up
10 minutes: True colours
Labels: reef
Wenky
1:17 PM
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Monday, February 26, 2007
Some pre-D day parameters, amidst scouring books on Down Syndrome (sure hope this comes out either for a short case or for essays .. but life is never a bed of roses, is it?)
Alkalinity = 2.23 meq/L (normal = 2.9-3.2)
Ca 2+ = 524 mg/L (normal = 420)
Sr = 16 mg/L (normal=16-22)
PO4- = 1 ppm (optimum = 0)
NO3- = 50 ppm (optimum = 5 or less)
Quite F*ed up, is it not? The cations are easily corrected, but the anions ... arghhhhhhhh. What can I expect, after half a year of no water changes and yet massive doses of phytoplankton and zooplankton? Damn those sponges, flame scallop and razorfish, hahahahaha.
Just dosed a total of 0.9 meq/L of buffer into the tank to raise alkalinity to 3.13 meq/L, no wonder the calcium is sky-high - the coralline algae aren't able to take up calcium because of the low alkalinity and high phosphate, and the pH has been swinging from 8.03-8.4. Not good. Time for a massive (50%) water change sometime in late April ... the dumbass Pura NitrateLock resin is OBVIOUSLY not doing its job of keeping the nitrate levels down, what a complete waste of $.
I think this is the first time I'm using these test reagents after winning them from a photo competition. Saw a really phat equipment made by Hanna Instruments the other day though, it was so OOOOH! Hate to think about the price however. It's a portable colorimeter (size of half a laptop) that measures dozens of ions electronically. Wow, no more titration!
Labels: reef
Wenky
12:44 PM
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