Back from the US...

I went to sunny and warm Florida to visit my parents - a nice inbetween Thanksgiving and Christmas visit that meant that I got to avoid the hoardes at the airports :). We also got to do a lot of Christmas shopping and I brought back loads of things to keep A warm - her body still wants to be in India where it's lovely and warm all the time :) This is Charley, all dolled up for the holidays and hanging out by the pool :) We went for a walk every morning and I wore the poor puppy out throwing the ball for him retrieve.



While I was away the zoanthids took a header off the rock and landed on Chihiro...zoanthids are a little toxic, especially to sensitive clams, so Chihiro was not long for the tank. The zoanthids have been taking a header off the rock about once a week but this time Chihiro was under them when they fell (she had been doing her squeeze trick to move herself around a little bit). Poor A woke up to the shrimps dancing on her carcass and I got panicked text messages telling me to WAKE UP!!! It was 3am in Florida :) By 4am I was awake and talking to A on the phone, calming her down. A got what was left of her out of the tank and I explained that it wasn't anything A had done, that it was probably the zoanthids, and that the care of the reef tank was still safe in her hands :). It was very sad - Chihiro was A's clam and she was the prettiest thing in the tank. R.I.P. Chihiro. We will get another clam, just not right away, because....

Before I left I was told that a sun polyp, a tubastrea, was soon to be mine! Due to crossed wires I didn't get it before I left but we picked it up a few days after I got back. This is another high maintenance baby, but she is also very beautiful. A and I carefully cycled/brought her home and then I carefully acclimatized her and put her in the tank. Then a bit later I put some of the new cyclopeze in the tank to see how everyone liked it - it was brine shrimp time for the clownfish - and after a bit of a fish and shrimp feeding frenzy (they like the cyclopeze :) the new sun polyp was coming out! I had been told it could be DAYS before she came out but here she was.



Just before lights out she had opened up this much:



And when I fed her Monday night she was REALLY coming out!



I was going to call her Sunny, but A has named her Surya for the Hindu God of the Sun.

Happy Christmas Eve and Merry Christmas!

The tank is really shaping up!





Ah, yes...in the second image you can see the newest tank addition: Chihiro, A's new clam. She is such a beautiful girl! We think she is a tridacna squamosa.



The colors are better when you look from above. They are also filtered by the glass in my tank, so here she is looking blue through glass....



and when looking through water she is green!



This is Chihiro under the "moon" light :)



I also have some zoanthids and they look better under the moonlight, but still pretty :)

The Birthday Beerfest and more friends in my fish tank :)

First...the birthday and citizenship party. There is a great pub called the Bree Louise near Euston Station. They have 10 beers on tap - 5 on *gravity* and 5 on handpump (plus the assorted lagers that the weaker of the species enjoy - you know who you are!!!! :) As soon as I heard that they would sell you the whole keg and you could have a party I knew what I was doing for my birthday this year (and it was months ago! :). I haunt the place, as it always has great beer that I am more than happy to consume a pint of :) So I booked the party, sent the invites, arranged with the publican as to what kind of beer I wanted and he delivered! I had a beautiful keg of Cottage Ales JT, from their Whippet series. It was spectacular (and I know, because I drank a lot of it over the 8 hours we were in the pub :). Here I am getting the first pint! :)



A brought a cake and another friend was also celebrating a birthday so there were 2 cakes! Perfect. Carl and Kate gave me a hat so that everyone knew who the new citizen was as well :)



A great time was had by all (and everyone made it home safe!

Now...for some more tank pictures :)

Here is the best picture of Minty yet! He was chasing the new shrimp (more below :)



I went a bit crazy the other night at the aquarium store. I had to wait for the expert guy (who has been amazingly helpful and tempts me with beautiful sun polyps :) so I saw them feed the stingray some worms while keeping the usually very calm, but now very pushy, giant gouramis (gouramii?) away from the tasty worms :) Then I checked out all the tanks, said hello to all the new critters :) and organized my questions and picked out some new things for the tank!!!!

I knew we wanted another Xenia as we love the one we have. We (A was expressing interest and that is always a good thing :) wanted the tiny white handed one so I had my eye on one. We had already discussed the serpent stars...they are interesting, but we decided there wasn't enough room for one (they can get to be a foot across!). We love Minty and Sam Yamato, my freshwater shrimp and I have wanted a Pacific Cleaner shrimp from the beginning. The aiptasia problem meant that Minty was the first arrival but next in the queue...I had my eye on one of the smaller cleaner shrimps. Then it was back to the coral tanks. I put some new mushrooms in the last time - just single mushroom fragments that will grow over time and spread - so it was time for something a little more interesting. I talked with the fish guy, he showed me some gorgeous sun polyp sort of like this (I'm linking to someone else's photo - no photos allowed in the shop :)



but these belonged to another guy that had ordered them and had just come in to collect them - they were gorgeous!!!!! I will have to get some, I think, even though they are much higher maintenance than anything I have tried so far. Anyway, I saw a couple of other things and ended up taking home 4 corals and 1 cleaner shrimp. I pedalled very carefully on my bike :)

So...some of the new additions. Here is Xara, the new Xenia. I think she has a nasty aiptasia on her rock, but she also has some star polyp that is a bit different than Heather. Beautiful, isn't she? Now visualize her hands pulsing open and closed.



Here's Jack, the cleaner shrimp. There was Jacques in Finding Nemo, but this guy is a Brit, so he's Jack :). He's probably half the size of Minty. He started his attempts at cleaning in the first 20 mins he was in the tank - he was giving Otello a feel with his antenna. It was awesome to watch.



This is a new coral that I think is a Dendronephthya. It was about a quarter this size in the coral tank at the shop and it was bright purple, it's more muted in the lights of my tank. It just opened up over night and expanded into what you see here. Wow. It has very specific feeding requirements, as does the other new one, which is just a very small stalk of what I think is Scleronephthya, in a bright chromium yellow/orange (you can see it in the lower left of the photo). The purple one is upside down because it usually hangs from the roof of caves and it seems happier like that - and I want my new guys to be happy :)



More as I have it! Enjoy!

See the fish!!!

This is a video of my the babies Otello and Penelope...they play like a couple of puppies :)

Video 1
Video 2

Enjoy!

October...the strangest month!

In early October A and I rode our bicycles to Richmond Park on the loveliest day of the whole year! We lay on the grass in the sun near the herd of deer and listened to them rut their stuff (it's mating season :). Then I got a cold (and so did A) and then it was my birthday :) And then we had snow!!! All in one month!

There was hail the night before and we woke up to this:



When I rode to work it was one of the lovliest (but cold :) rides to work I have had all year...there have been some good ones, so it wasn't THE loveliest, of course :) The sky was that lovely blue, the sun was peaking through the trees and there was snow on the ground. Ah! I LOVE it when it's like that.



A is freezing her butt off, of course - her body is wishing it was in lovely, warm India :)

Tank update...meet Mint Sauce (or Minty, as we are calling him :).


He(she?) is a Peppermint shrimp and he is in the tank to eat the aiptasia (weeds!). He already ate the biggest and nastiest one, so he is doing his job! He is new, so he is shy, but I am sure that he will come out and eat the ones that are not hidden in his hidey holes (and my rock has some great hidey holes for the guys that need it :). I will get a better photo of him when he decides it's safe to have a look around.

Penelope and Otello are doing well - Penelope was nipping my hand when I was cleaning the glass the other day. They are like a couple of puppies - they wiggle their little butts like they are wagging their tails and they are always starving! :)

Later!

And a big welcome to Otello and Penelope!!!!

These are the new residents in my reef tank - a pair of ocellaris clownfish, one black and one orange. Aren't they cute? :):):) They are nearly as silly as I am.



Everyone else it doing well, too!

-K

New additions!

It is slowly developing and that is good for developing my patience :)

Jesús disappeared for awhile and I only ever saw one nassarius snail at a time, so I thought I had lost one...I was not hopeful. It's all good though, I am seeing everyone and I discovered this morning that Jesús has molted his exoskeleton...he might be looking for a new shell soon :)

I have also got a couple more coral frags, you can see Xenia here and there is the new Star Polyp behind her:


This is the Star Polyp, I think it looks a bit like heather:


I also got some leather coral:


And this is the new mushroom - I like the stripey ones, but I think the other ones are a bit boring. This frag also came with some feather dusters (I think) and 2 Aiptasia, one of which is inhibiting the mushroom (you can see it in the photo).


The diatoms have receded and the Trochus snail is now eating again (he just sat there for days!). It looks great! I am mixing up my own seawater now and testing nearly every day. The new tank certainly keeps me out of trouble! But don't worry, I'm not neglecting my fish - they are very happy and I wish Anabel could do something about keeping the flat clean - she does a stellar job on the fish tank. It's never been that clean and I think Mr. Yamato has to work more to find something to eat :)

More later!!!!

-K

More reef!

This is a video of my Xenia coral Xena :) She is a grabby girl...but it means she is happy and that makes me happy :)

New tank reidents!

Over the weekend I got some new tenants for the reef. Some drama...the tank heater was too powerful for the tank and it was yo-yoing the temp from 24 overnight to 29 in the midday. Poor guys, it almost killed the new coral.

This is Xena the xenia coral:


This is José the scarlet legged hermit crab (I have 2, the other one is Jesús and he has pink algae on his shell - he was hiding when I took the photos)


This is what I think is a Trochus snail. This guy is great (I really like snails) - he can bridge across the rocks and he is all over the place. At night he gets on the back wall of the tank where he is safe, but in the light he is slurping stuff off the rock.


This is a bristle worm. He came free with the live rock (and there is a second one and something this looks like sea slug)


This is another hitchhiker...I don't know if it came with the live rock or on the small fragment that the coral is on (I found it on the coral rock). It's a cool little starfish. There are 2 of these, this is the big one, the other one is tiny, about 4 mmm across!

Welsh Walking!

These are pics that my friend Mark took (he takes the best photos :)

We had a great time, even though there was never a dry minute! The beer was superb and the food was fabulous and filling (the puddings to die for :)

The walk was fabulous, even if we didn't get to the top of the mountain (we couldn't *see* the top of the mountain!)









We saw lots of sheep...


and it was wet wet wet!

Lots of new developments....

We lost Leroy - he threw himself out of the tank :( I think they only want 10 fish in there and all otehrs are killed or expelled.... :)

I have a new tank resident, her name is Anabel, she is an Apple snail. She is AWESOME. She is like something out of Star Wars with all her feelers :) I wanted her to clean my windows, bt she has not gotten around to it...but she certainly gets around!



I also took the plunge and got a reef tank...it is cycling at the moment (no, not that kind!!!! :). I have big plans for it...lots of snails, crabs, shrimp and soft coral and a few fish. I know I have one critter in there as I saw it this morning, it must have come with the live rock. I am very excited about it...and it's helping me practice patience as it really can't be rushed.



Catch you all later!!!!

-K

Hey all...

I'm back :) My shoulder is nearly good as new (I can do push-ups now, but it still tweeks a bit :) and I have been riding to work, slower and more cautious than before - I don't want to take any more spills for awhile :) I have some new flattie pedals on my bike and combined with my skate shoes they are sticky as the Stickum that Lester Hayes was so famous for (American football reference, you will have to look him up - he played for the Raiders :).

I have 2 new little fish...we lost one of the rasboras so I got 2 more :). I wasn't really happy staying with the spy theme on their names, but they are orange and black and I have been following baseball and football (the American kind :) these days so I have named them Leroy and Cal (for Leroy Kelly of the Cleveland Browns and Cal Ripken Jr. of the Baltimore Orioles). Poor Cal has somehow damaged his tail fin and has lost most of it (it is growing back) but he is still out there swimming with the big fish :) They are very cute, but like everything in my tank - they are growing fast!

The summer has somehow rushed by but it's all good.

Catch you later!

The last month has been hard...

Just over a month a go I got doored by a young woman in a VW Polo - she opened the door without looking and took me out. If I had been just that much faster or just that much slower she would have missed me! I was riding my bicycle to my softball game and I never made it. I am a good motorcyclist, i know how to watch for heads in a car to check if it is occupied, but the woman was reaching over to the floor of the passenger side to get her handbag so there was no head to see. I was riding in the bicycle lane down a relatively busy street - I couldn't ride in the road because of the traffic.

It did pretty much the same thing to my left shoulder as I did to my right shoulder a few years back when I was diving for a ground ball in a softball game. It got jammed and put it out of action for a month or two, but nothing serious - nothing is broken or torn loose in there. I was very lucky. Bessie, however, was even more lucky! She shows no signs of accident at all - I knew she was a tough old girl :) I am happy to report that the thing that came off the worst in the accident was the car - the door wouldn't shut! It left about an inch gap and there were ripply dents in the front quarter panel and on the door.

When it all happened I knew it had been hit hard and landed hard - I landed on my back and hit the ground about the same time that my head was receiving the message about the door being opened - it was that fast! I sent a text to my team and told them I would be delayed and then I called A - I was just down the road from home, less than mile. She came to get me and I told her she could help me get to the game....she knew I was not right :) We sorted things out and then she made me go home and put some ice on my shoulder and the scrapes that I got on my leg. It was the right thing to do. Over the next few days I was coming to accept that it was a bit worse than I thought and that I was going to be off my bike for weeks, not days.

I had a race booked and I wasn't going to make it. It was the 12 hour solo event at TwentyFour12 and I couldn't even ride my bike in the street outside my house, I wasn't going to be able to ride off road. So we changed our plans...but we had to do something just as cool or I was going to be depressed. By this time my shoulder was really letting me know it wasn't happy and I started putting it in a sling to take the pressure off of it. I suggested to A that we walk the Kennet and Avon Canal from Reading to Bath and she readily agreed! Woohoo! So I got busy and booked some accommodation in Bath and the train tickets and I now had something to look forward to. I started walking to work to get my legs in shape for the 80 mile walk.

The time came to go and A was not feeling well, so we delayed our departure by one day and I changed the tickets and we got off in Kintbury instead of Reading.

The canal is right next to the railway so we took this photo and headed west!


We saw lots of things as we walked - flowers, wildlife, cool canal things...the back of A :) It was amazing! And when we got to Bath, that was amazing, too :)

Here are some of the many flowers that we saw:






We saw some amazing dragon flies but they wouldn't stay still to have their photo taken and neither would the stoat! But we saw lots of birds, cows, horses, goats, sheep and dogs :) And even this lizard.


and ducklings!!!!!




The canal was beautiful and we were walking in the most rural areas.










We saw walked under a ton of bridges and by loads of locks - more that one per mile on our first day - and swing bridges and even one draw bridge that was manually operated. We did have one tunnel of the trip - the first day - which we had to go up and over and not through.





We saw lots of swing bridges - the bridge just swings out of the way to let the boats pass.




and locks. I have saved the best one, though, you will see later :)


Here is A on the Avoncliff Aquaduct...


There was a total lack of canalside pubs on the first day...but we found an excellent one the end of the first day. It was in Pewsey and they had Hidden Brewery beer...on gravity!!! It was fabulous! There were more as we went along....good thing, too as we needed one when the rain came :)



Some interesting items we saw along the way...a home made tandem, a canalboat that looked like Hobbits would live there, a fab bicycle sculpture and these beautiful clouds.






Due to the injury, I wore my sling pretty much the whole time....



Don't be thinking that we wore ourselves out, we took lots of breaks....
for ice cream...

to watch boats in the locks...

and for PUDDINGS!!!!!! This is a bread and butter pudding made out of scones and clotted cream....it was as good as it looks, I promise :)

here I am asking A if I can eat ALL the pudding...or do I have to share?


We had to take a little detour....

When we arrived in Pewsey (and went right for the beer :) we got around to asking the publican about some accommodation for the night. He was not hopeful and nor was a woman friend of his that was also at the bar. He did make a few phone calls for us and everyone was booked. He suggested we walk down to Honey Street (40 mins farther on the canal) and camp out at the music festival - have a few drinks and pass out out in the field :) We are world travellers and we didn't exactly look at each other in horror:) When we pushed a little harder for him to think of alterrnatives he called a few more places and then we found out the real reason all the accomodation was booked - there was a crop circle convention in the area and people had come from all over the world to go. Ah, that would be it, then :)

We reluctantly disturbed our friends on very short notice and asked for a bed for the night - we hadn't realized that they were so close! They were so wonderful - they were not put out, they were more than happy to have us and the kids didn't want us to leave when it was time to go and the best part is that they even came to collect us! Ok, it's only 15 miles, but we had just walked about 20 miles and we were knackered. Our fabulous driver even stopped on the way back so we could collect a pizza - we were also starving :) We ended up staying the next day with them and going out to play with the kids twice! And spend a couple of hours at the pub on the green :) Two mornings later we got dropped in Marlborough early in the morning and we were on our own again and tasked to find the canal.

We were going to take a bus to Devizes but they didn't start running until 10, so then we were going to go to Bath and walk the route backwards, but wee got off the bus early in a town that was only a couple of miles from the canal and started there. We asked directions and got some helpful and not very helpful suggestions (and a great recommendation for a pub :). We were told to go through the corn field to find the Avon River and then just follow it down, there was a wide path. Hmmm. We did the cornfield and found the river, but there was no path!!! We followed the river walking through some fields and finally got stopped by a wall of stinging nettles - this was definitely not the route. We managed to find a public footpath, but the farmer had not kept the way clear. Then we spotted a path and we followed that...to another cornfield. This one had a bit of a path cut through it (the occasional cornstalk was cut or torn off at the base - it was a path)and it was obvious that this was the public footpath. We emerged to the surprise of the local residents, but no one said anything but the dogs barked :) We found the road and a cold drink and then we finally found the canal! We were back in business and well on track to make the Bath B&B before dark. It was an excellent diversion for our trip!

I must say that I have always wanted to walk through a cornfiled - be it Field of Dreams or even before that...it was awesome.



So, we made the B&B and it was wonderful. We walked to the next town over and went to a gastro pub and picked lots of small items off the menu and that made for exactly what we wanted to eat. Then we slept like the dead - we had done a long day!

The next morning we were raring to go and we walked the last bit of the canal into Bath.

We saw this interesting sight - a speed camera on the canal?


We also spent some time watching the boats go through the Deep Lock. A road works project had combined 2 locks into one very deep one.





Then we were in town...







They had all these pigs...we chose ones that were like us :)



Would you believe...we found a fab Nepalese restaurant!!!! Yak Yeti Yak. It was so good, brought back so many memories, and the people were so friendly - we went back the next day for dinner, too! The yellow dahl was fabulous and they had a bean/bamboo shoot/potato curry that was out of this world :)

This is A stating that she isn't going to share....ok,maybe you can have one momo :):):)


Ah, back home again. It was a fab trip, we did about 50 miles and never had to be out in the rain - we had beautiful weather!!!

And tomorrow I am going to ride my bike to work! The first time in over a month. I will be very careful....

-K

P.S. all the photos were taken with our mobile phones!!!! not the cameras we hauled all over India and China.