So when my neighbour moved to Adelaide and asked me if I would like his empty tank and equipment, I decided to try my hand at making a planted community tank where (hopefully) everyone would get on and I would at last get my water feature!

Here’s the tank with soil substrate and decorations in place, on a slab of Douglas Fir from the Devil’s Punch Bowl, cut by a local sawmill and sanded down by Ian and myself.

We are cycling with fish but are going fully planted so here’s the tank with plants and water and bacteria culture, heater and filter running:

It’s lucky that we did as the heater malfunctioned almost straight away and took the tank up to over 30 degrees centigrade.  I went out and bought a heater and spare so we had 2 heaters and 2 filter sets.  Amazingly, the plants appeared to survive.  After a few days we put our first couple of fish in to start producing ammonia before the bacteria starved:

I tested the water every day to begin with to make sure that there was not a severe ammonia spike and was ready to do water changes if needed.  I’ve also been adding a treatment frequently to increase the amount of friendly bacteria in the filter media.  The plants responded despite their cooking, and the fish after initially being very nervous settled in nicely.

I got a tool that has a swappable end so that it can be used to trim the plants and also to grasp things and move them around.  Trimming the aquarium plants I think is going to become a regular activity!  Still testing the water every couple of days.

The pond weed which came with no roots is now getting very messy and its lifespan seems to have been drastically reduced by the early cooking (!) so I’ve bought some new plants, and two more male guppies.  This changed the behaviour of the first two dramatically, they’re now all going round as a gang and seem much more relaxed.

So, that’s where things are at the moment, we’re being very careful not to introduce any fish or plants that are likely to upset what is already in place.  Several fish have already been researched and rejected as too aggressive or bitey.  I wouldn’t be surprised if we end up with a tank full of guppies.  They are delightful fish – lively, friendly and inquisitive.

Kitten or Puma – you decide. Note : when I sit on that chair my feet don’t reach the floor completely.

I do live in the most glorious place. Even on a dull Winter afternoon the vistas from the Surrey Hills can be sublime.

I used to have a reputation for being very organised and never allowed myself to forget birthdays, anniversaries, etc as I carried around a fat Filofax full of addresses, dates, accounts and just about all the details of life that I could possibly need.

Having my handbag stolen from my place of work in London some 13 or 14 years ago now gave me a bit of a shock as that Filofax went and for months I was explaining to people who called expecting me to be somewhere at a certain time that I’d lost my diary and oh, could I have their address and telephone number please?!

After that I got a bit obsessed with backups and electronic organisers seemed to be the way to go. I had a long, long struggle with them where they duplicated/deleted/added appointments, contacts and reminders almost at random until I got to the iPhone which actually does what it says on the tin as opposed to the other devices which made lots of claims but did not deliver.

I’ve stayed with the iPhone for a long time, synching with Outlook 2010 and backing that up to a Seagate FreeAgent drive which has been working well. However.

There are some people who don’t like to read books from screens, they prefer paper. There are people who need to print documents if they need to read them carefully and some who can read from screen with no issue. I’ve never considered myself one of these people but, to my own surprise, I’ve just recently bought a load of Filofax inserts and pressed my old leather Filofax case into service again. Why have I done this?

I think it has to do with how information gets entered into my brain. If I type something, it seems that it is “recorded” into a different area and treated in a whole different way than if I write it with a pen. There is also still no personal organiser that I know of which can display in such clarity the contents of a week and the entirety of each entry, I think because of the size of the screens. I find it so much easier to visualise and remember things that I have written in my organiser rather than things that I have tapped into a tiny touchscreen.

It’s also quite nostalgic to have all the old sections and diary format again which doesn’t seem to have changed substantially for over two decades! I have sized and hole-punched some lovely postcards and scattered them through the pages. Also, it’s saved me a shed-load of money as I don’t think I’ll be in the market for an iPad now.

Just upgraded WordPress from a very old version so forgive me if it hops offline from time to time.

My Hotmail account got hacked so I removed all of my contacts to prevent you all from getting spammed so drop me a line if you fancy a chatter via Messenger.