UnexpectedGuest

I ordered my new aquarium quite a while back, but I was told that because many people suddenly wanted to try this hobby (as a COVID19 side-effect I guess), I have to wait for it to be built, and the queue is long.
So while waiting for its delivery, I was loitering on Foo the Flowerhorn's YT channel, and ... that's how it all began :)
Next I was buying and reading Diana Louise Walstad "Ecology of the Planted Aquarium", and then I decided I wanted to try having shrimps at home.
Foo, Diana Louise, thank you, I just spent my week-end building a cabinet for my brand new 30 liters aquarium.
This one wont' be connected to my water inlet and a waste water outlet, so Diana Louise have to be true about the 'no regular water change needed', because I'll have to do the water changes the old way, ... by hand.
And I'll go for Foo's wise advice:

No livestock, only the plants, for the first 2 months

This leaves me some time to find out which shrimps will live in this tank.

So, this is what it currently looks like on a 11.6" display (the pen's here for scale purpose):
Otherwise:

• I like this tree view better
• All blocks have dedicated refresh times
• Aquarium values are still fake, no Profilux yet
• Will also track here my water pumps maintenance dates, no more 'Oooops, I forgot!' excuses
• Upload to UG.com is up&running, some PHP skills will be needed now in order to display nice curves here
• Perhaps I'll fill the still empty space with some local weather forecast, there are some nice free API such as https://api.met.no/

Have a nice one.

I hadn't planned to write a post about my Cichlids today, but after hours spent trying to get Tortoise Git to work with my Synology Git server (with relative success), I'm getting my mind off it.
So a little word about the inhabitants of my Tanganyika tank (2m/6.6ft length, 1000l/220gal), after all, this quest for the ultimate pH and always clean water is for them. Yes, my tank is supposed to be a geographical one, but you will see below that I took some liberties with this rule. Shhh.
So, what's swimming in that big tank?

Neolamprologus Leleupi (about 10)
The ones I thought were bright yellow before visualizing them next to the Caeruleus, so they are rather orange after all. Lively, peaceful, pleasant hosts even if no visible reproduction for the moment.

Neolamprologus Multifasciatus (8)
The little one who loves snail shells! (even if I only provide him with snail shells from Bourgogne. And even if I am French, I will never eat such a thing). They may be scrappy, but these fish are finally too small compared to the other species in my tank, it's my fault I thought that my ground surface would be sufficient so that they could reserve a space for themselves. This is more or less true, but they remain confined around three shells in a corner. This is my alibi to buy another aquarium for them in which they will be comfortable :) Some fry still managed to survive, but I could never catch them, my tank is too deep (or I have too short arms).

Julidochromis Regani (about 20)
Discreet, they often reproduce and I have already counted at least three litters of which five or six fry have managed to exceed the critical size.

Cyphotilapia Gibberosa (4)
They are theoretically a male and three females, though it's too early to say because they are too young to reproduce, even if they are already a nice size. And later, nobody will bother them :)

There are also intruders in my tank, in the sense that they do not come from Tanganyika :

Labidochromis Caeruleus (about 30)
It is also an African Cichlid, but it comes from Lake Malawi, so it is very close to its cousins from Lake Tanganyika. These Yellow Labs breed like rabbits in my home, the eight adults have given birth to more than twenty fry that have survived beyond the centimeter. They are very active, even ... boring with the others. A real Mbuna after all, I can't say I wasn't aware of it.

Ancistrus Dolichopterus (about 15)
They're ugly, but I like them. And they took advantage of a pH of around 7 when they arrived to make a dozen fry that grew well. Yes, that's a lot of people ...

As an unexpected consequence of all these Cichlids in front of my dining table, I've never eaten so much shrimp. I buy some every week, and it's always the same ritual: one for the cat, one for the fish, and the rest for me. Do you like shrimp? Raise Cichlids.

Next time I'll talk about my water pumps. Yes, you really have to be an aquarium lover to enjoy reading posts like this :)

Things are coming along nicely with my monitoring project:

One can already find there:

• Minimal Banana Pi monitoring infos (top-screen block),
• Netatmo infos collected via API call ('HOUSE' mid-screen block),
• Future place holder for Aquariums data ('AQUARIUMS' bottom-screen block). Currently fake data is displayed, ain't ordered the Profilux yet :)

Next steps :

1. Upload data to this very server, in order to provide a Web public display,
2. Get a bigger screen for my Banana PI, my current 4 inches is way too small for me :)
3. Begin the Profilux adventure.

What?
Aquarium plural is Aquaria?
Sorry, that hurts my french ears too hard, so I'll stick to the Aquariums form.

What bis?
Why a console version, no nice graphics?
Yep, my Banana Pi's a small thing, I wan to keep it w/o a graphical desktop environment.
And I do like its root look&feel this way :)

News will follow when I have new things to show. See ya.

A few years ago I bought a Banana Pi.
Never heard of it? It's a Raspberry Pi clone, but with at least one killer feature: a SATA interface. So, no more SD card ever lasting i/o, welcome to the SSD performances. Not that I need those performances, but I've always been worried about the lifespan of an SD card used as an OS storage.
I never went that far using my Banana Pi, mainly because the official distributions were unfriendly and outdated. But when I discovered Armbian, all those problems vanished. Armbian is an up to date robust and well documented 'Minimal Debian based Linux with powerful configurator and software installer'. And it's true :)
I'm thinking about automating the temperature and pH monitoring of my aquariums, with appliances like GHL ProfiLux 4 aquarium controller. This little but expensive jewel comes with an embedded web server. I would like to publish on this web site the result of this monitoring, but not only, I'd also like to add things like in house temperature and pressure, in order to have a complete view.
Having no ProfiLux yet (still saving €), I started playing with what I already have: my Banana Pi and in house data from my Netatmo weather station. This device has a public API and I found scripting the retrieving of my data quite simple.
So in a matter of hours, I managed to install Armbian on my Banana Pi, read Netatmo's API and write a small Tcl script that collects my data on demand.

Actually I'm quite happy with the result:
Next step? Put the results in a database (yes, I know, I wanted a flat CMS to avoid databases, just to find myself needing one a few weeks later), and periodically send them to this public server. Yes, my Banana Pi will remain local only, the world is not ready yet for it :)
And later, build and publish a complete monitoring page with the Netatmo and the aquarium data. No roadmap ;)

Ps: Yes, I know, Tcl is not very trendy. I'm too old for Ruby/Python. A good friend of mine used to say: Tradition is a good thing, though in this particular case I would say One can be sexy without being trendy.

For a Cichlids aquarium, one should change at least half of the water every month, because those fish do not tolerate nitrites at all. Have you ever lugged 500 liters of dirty water in a bucket and then 500 liters of clean water, without getting sciatica and without wetting the entire floor of the house? To change the water manually, you must really love your fish ... or have a small aquarium. However, Cichlids hate nitrite-laden water as much as they love large aquariums.
The solution? Automate the water change with a drip system. Not only is it autonomous (no more buckets, pipes and floods), but the change is continuous and smooth, which does not cause an abrupt change in the water composition. The only condition is to have a drinking water inlet and a waste water outlet close to the aquarium.

Phase 1, the easiest, bring clean water to the aquarium.
To avoid putting chlorinated water in the aquarium, one should let it rest for a few hours so that the chlorine evaporates, and moreover it allows the water to to reach room temperature. For this, I use ... a toilet flush placed above the surface of the aquarium so that gravity works for me. Yes, it's not very sexy, it's of course to hide in a nearby room, but it works very well and it's a reliable and cheap device. From the flush comes a hose that brings the water into the aquarium (a hose used for air pumps is perfect, cheap, flexible, transparent). Then we control the water flow with an air valve, yes the same one used for air pumps. A drop of water being about 0.05ml, and knowing the volume of water to change in a month, I won't insult you by explaining the rule of three, we then adjust the air valve (that became a water valve, life is change) to set the desired number of drops per minute. For example, in my case with a flow rate of 200 drops per minute I change about 430 liters per month. Without water on the floor or back pain.

Phase 2, we now have to evacuate the excess water otherwise we will have a little problem...
Here the idea is to put next to the aquarium an expansion vase that will evacuate the overflow, and that's where it's magic, without piercing the glass of the aquarium :)
A drawing being better than a big speech, here's the principle:

For this expansion tank I used pieces of PVC pipes, the ones sold for water drains. Do not forget to be able to adjust the vertical position of the expansion tank to adjust the water level in the aquarium. Under the expansion tank a pipe brings the dirty water to your waste water outlet (or to your plants, did you say aquaponics?).

Now you can enjoy two magical effects: the water is changed automatically, and from time to time (preferably when you have guests at the table), everyone hears the sound of a flushing water tank filling up when no one is at the toilet, effect 100% guaranteed.

My system has no more secrets for you, it's up to you now.
(and yes, my diagram is not very sexy, but it's been drawn with love™)

So, first post about my passion for aquarium fish. I talk about it much more to please myself than to try to share any science, Youtube is full of geniuses in all fields, Cichlids of the great African lakes included. You are warned :)

Well, just to disgust 99% of people, let's start talking about aquarium science by talking about pH. Why talk about chemistry instead of just talking about fish? Because the fish I chose come from Lake Tanganyika, which has a very particular pH, because it is very basic. If you remember your chemistry classes, the pH varies between 0 (very acidic), 7 (neutral) and 14 (very basic). Moreover, this pH is not linear (that would be too easy): for example, if you go from 7 to 8 the pH is 10 times more basic. Basically in freshwater aquariums, there are two extremes: the Amazon area whose water is quite acidic (<7) and the African great lakes whose water is strongly basic (>8).

So how can I get water with a pH around 8.5 when when the one coming out of my tap it is at 7? Two solutions:

• Add baking soda (30 grams per 100 liters) but water changes will modify this proportion so one must constantly reintroduce some of it, not practical.
• Put limestone rocks and substrate that will slowly dissolve and raise the pH to the desired value. Advantage ? Slower process (therefore not violent for fish that don't like sudden changes) and above all almost insensitive to continuous water changes since the dissolution is slow and constant.

I chose the second solution for its obvious advantages by placing in my tank a substrate dedicated to this type of biotope: sand from the Dolomites (it's white, that's what I wanted) and some limestone rocks (they are found in profusion everywhere, mine come from Provence). With these two ingredients my pH has gently increased (in three months) from 7 to 8.6 and stabilized itself: Cool, that's exactly what I wanted in in speed of variation, stability and of course value (the pH of Tanganyika is 9 on the surface according to the literature, which I have to trust. Yes, unfortunately I couldn't measure it myself, I only got within 500km of this lake and at that blessed time I didn't even know the pH existed. But I'm getting lost).

But how do you measure this pH? It's a bit more complex than measuring temperature :) In the beginning, I bet it all on the JBL ProScan. Sexy (with the results on my smartphone), fast (2 minutes), it had everything to please. Yes but ... it's not reliable. The values are very fluctuating: two tests done in a row can give pH variations between 7.5 and 8.5 (remember, a pH unit is a factor of 10 on acidity). Conclusion, I don't use it anymore. So I bought an electronic Ph-meter (sold mainly for swimming pools). It's not expensive, but the problem is that it often needs to be calibrated, and I don't want to spend my time buying the buffer powder needed for this action. So? I searched and found the pH of the main mineral waters sold in bottles. In France, I buy from time to time some Vittel (one of the most basic to get closer to the target pH range) whose pH is constant at 7.8, and I recalibrate my tester in a glass of Vittel ... before drinking it. This way I hydrate myself, my pH is worthy of the banks of Tanganyika, and I calibrate for cheap.
I think we're done with the subject, next time, I'll talk about automatic water changes. Perhaps.

Have a great! as Ryan would say. (no, it has nothing to do with fish, but I do what I want).

A few years ago I bought the game Pathfinder Adventure (from now labelled PA), a card game in the D&D-like Pathfinder universe. Beyond my tendency to make impulse purchases, I was attracted to this game because the keywords D&D, RPG, and solo blinked pretty much in the description. I decided to remove the dust on this (big) box, and after a few hours of play here is my synthesis. PS: I own the french version of this box, which turned to be an important detail, see below.

The packaging is very nice, and there are only cards (and a few dice). this gives an important clue: PA is not an RPG, it's a tactical game with cards, just in a Pathfinder universe. So here there is no role-playing, don't be fooled by the famous classic D&D classes or attributes. So first conclusion, if you want to do role-playing, go ahead.

The rules are clear... when they exist, otherwise you have to guess. For example, the purpose of the game is not explicitly explained, I had guessed it when I read the rules. If the principle is easy (once guessed), the management rules are numerous and not intuitive, and each card brings complementary rules. So it's very rich, but it takes time to know the cards, which are numerous (more than 1000 in the basic edition). I discovered after my first hours with PA that the "downloads" section of the site dedicated to this game at Paizo had precious resources. Yes, I could have guessed it :) For example, the US rulebook is much more complete than the FR one, and from the 1st paragraph the goal of the game is clearly described. So if you like tactics, card games, and an abundance of rules that contextually modify the basic rules, PA seems like a good game to me.

A quick word about the cards, which are beautiful: But ... it's clearly a game for those with perfect eyesight, because even with my glasses, reading the elements written on these cards is difficult (it looks like Arial 6 on my screen, to give you an idea).

Then I realized that there was a digital version of Pathfinder Adventure, called Pathfinder Adventures (yes, why AdventureS?). So yes, it's less sexy (for those loving owning things), only solitary (where you can play up to 4 or even 6 with the physical version), but as often, the computer version is much cheaper, and above all, it manages for us all the mechanics of the game. We can thus concentrate only on tactics, and no longer have to read and reread the rules to know who has to do what when (when we clearly find the information we are looking for). And, it's clearly a detail, but since PA manages the experience of your characters in a (very) minimal way, the Steam version saves you from having to make crosses on a beautiful card to materialize your hard-earned bonuses. And it's while watching a stream of this computer game that I realized that I had guessed the goal of the game :)

So? I probably won't play the tabletop version of PA again, if I want to play a tactical game I clearly prefer a classic wargame. And if I want to play a role-playing game, this game doesn't meet my need, it's not enough to have "Pathfinder" written on the box for that. Will I play the Steam version? Maybe I will:

• it's ridiculously cheap, 20€ for the all adventures (where the box costs 60€ for just the basic adventure)
• it runs the game mechanics for me
• I don't need multiplayer

Or maybe not, because I'm not really a fan of the very principle of the game (but you understood it, I was the one who was wrong about the type of game, and not the game itself which is intrinsically bad).