Time to chill and watch them swim

Some people listen to music, some use aromatherapy but for me, its having an aquarium.

The setup was below $100.

Things that went through my mind when choosing an aquarium:
a) Location of power supply - yes, I had 1 power supply that could power the pump and lights
b) Do I have time to maintain - well, I chose a low maintenance tank and my lovely wife is helping with the feeding.
c) Are my kids ready? - yes, all were briefed that no fishing is allowed in the house.
d) What type of aquarium should I buy? - At the shop, decided to go for a all-in-1 tank that had lights, pump and the tank is full covered to prevent suicidal fishes from jumping out.
e) Budget - $100 was the max I was willing to spend.

Learnings:
When my wife and I first started setting up the aquarium, enthusiasm was high. We spent quite a considerable sum of money on fishes. Why? Because the fatality rate was high. It's easy on hindsight when you already have a "seasoned" aquarium to say.....dun buy so much fish......you must let the aquarium get enough bacteria blah blah blah....have patience....please....who can wait so long?

Come on! If you spend almost $100 on an aquarium, you would want to have beautiful fishes inside right???  and immediately too....Duh...


If possible, start with CHEAP and yet still beautiful fish....
After countless retrieval of dead fishes from my aquarium and becoming good friends with the "uncle' at the aquarium shop (cos I keep buying fishes from him), I decided one Sunday afternoon to "invest" in those live fish that the aquarium sell as food for other bigger fishes.

I bought 2 bags of baby carp/gold fishes for $3. Out of the numerous fishes, all died except 2. At the same time, my friend gave me a pair of guppies. The female was pregnant and she gave birth to over 30 babies.  From the 30 guppy babies, they multiplied until today.....the population is quite stable.

Seeing my 2 gold fish swimming (Adam and Eve), one Sunday I decided give them more friends by adding an additional bag of live fish into the aquarium. Surprisingly, the fatality rate was very low this time. Only 2 died.

In summary, it seems like the aquarium is quite healthy already.....bacteria, water and all factors.


Can guppies and gold fish live together?
Yes, I have guppies, goldfish.carp, 1 Oto and 1 prawn living together.

Happy after food...

Another pregnant guppy

The goldfish like the bottom half whereas the guppies take the top part of the tank

Fishfood

These are what we feed them.....mixture so they dun get bored.

Happiness
Its not expensive to maintain, yet it brings our family countless hours of discussion, talk and fun just watching them feed or swim around. Indeed, we sort of get the feeling of how happy Daddy God feels when he looks at us.

Home made musical instrument

One day my daughters came home and said that they needed to have home made musical instruments as part of their school work.

My wife went on youtube and surfed to this video. I thought it was interesting.
With a few snips, an ordinary straw could become a oboe.

No wonder people in the past did not need PSP, DS, phone games to entertain themselves. The video is so refreshing. Why not try it yourself?

Ironic that I took the photo of the straw with the iPad as background.

Close up of the "straw" oboe

Ants! Dun go for the trail....get to the root

Ants....how to get rid of them.

About a couple of weeks ago.....ants, the tiny ones started crawling on my kitchen worktop. My wife was tracing the trail and it led to multiple "suspected" corners....

Insecticide spray was used. Great, the ants would disappear for 1 day. Then it cam back again....arrrgh.

Finally, after a prayer, I got the prompting in my heart to use ant bait instead. I seemed to remember buying 1 long strip before that had a couple of capsules. After some digging at the storage boxes, I found 1 capsule left.

I sprinkled the bait sparingly along the trail where the ants were seem to be crawling.....then went to bed.

Its been a few days now....no more ants. Yippee.....indeed the chinese idiom is correct "chop grass rid root". Better to get rid of the ant colony than to get rid of the ant trail.


The silent ant destroyer Golden Hammer (Prime supermarket sells it for $2.10 but I bought mine at a hardware shop for $2.50)

Fibre Broadband at last....

Ok what I meant was that I finally changed my mind to let the guys from Opennet come into my home to install the fibre termination point (TP)

When I received the letter from Opennet inviting me to install the TP, I was a bit apprehensive. I HATE any drilling or running wires in my home.

But upon a chance visit to my friend's home, he gave me a good idea on where to install the TP.

So.....the consideration was this.

a) No need to run the fibre from your front door to the electrical points next to your TV. This is because the NIMs project was canned....
b) You can always use a wireless router to "WiFi" your home.
c) Best to install the TP next to an electrical point
d) When subscribing for your Fibre Broadband package, choose a provider that give you 2-in-1 residential gateway (RG) plus Wireless Router device. Saves on getting an extra plug if you need to get a Wireless router yourself.


Finally on the fateful day on 6 July, the contractor from Opennet came to install my fibre TP.

The contractor did a good job at my request to drill 1 small hole through the wall to accommodate the fibre. After which he ran the trunking down vertically to the TP.

This was the final result:

Next project is to choose a Fibre Broadband provider.......so many choices......again

Survellience Camera for home....should I do it?

Currently considering the available options for *cheep* and workable solution. Why cheap? Because I do not need professional quality as I do not forsee myself using the video in the courts. Its more of just doing it for fun.

30 July - saw that Az***h was having a promotion on ip camera at Challenger. Went to look at their online manual, called their tech support and it seemed its not so simple to setup the camera to view from a mobile phone. Argghh these DDNS and port forwarding are so complicated. So I gave up!

2 Aug - asked the Starhub technician that installed my fibre broadband on how to open the port in the D-link router / gateway. He game me a good answer. Go buy a d-link ip camera as they have already setup the DDNS for you. Sure will work one. And they even have a iPhone app.

I left it as that......

Will post more when I have the time to search around.