Baxil [bakh-HEEL'], n.
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Below are the 13 most recent journal entries recorded in the "Baxil" journal:
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08:37 pm
![[User Picture]](http://l-userpic.livejournal.com/50761588/240226) [Link] |
Fish no more
Came back home tonight from ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) necama and Kathryn's wedding (which was lovely) to an unpleasant surprise: What could literally be described as a bloodbath in our f33shtank. Corpses everywhere. The entire school of neon tetras dead, several guppies, and two of our five clown loaches.
After getting over our shock, I took some water samples and we whipped through a quick cleaning and water and filter change. Forensic ichthyology revealed a giant spike in lethal nitrates, so I ran down to the fish store and bought some chemicals to neutralize them. Hate going for the quick fix, but we're leaving again tomorrow morning (for the road trip to Kansas to visit kadyg's family that we've been planning for months). The emergency work seems to have stabilized the remaining fish, but the loaches are still swimming oddly and I really don't know what's going to happen after we leave again. (UPDATE: Nitrates still ~15 ppm, will do 50% water change and one more round of chemicals before we go ...)
To compound the issue, most of the ammonia (that bacteria turn into nitrates; and subsequently into nitrites, which the plants filter out of the water) comes from either fish waste or uneaten food. The culprit was probably a combination of heat plus the zucchini I left for our pleco to munch on in our absence: looks like the vegetable disintegrated much faster than expected, and rotted into waste material that hit the tank all at once. I added some beneficial bacteria, which will only have a delayed effect, but I guess we'll just have to put the fish on a starvation diet until either I or a roommate can monitor the tank more closely. That'll be at least another three and a half days.
I'm not sure how many of them will last the week. What a time for this to hit.
Current Location: ~/Brainstorm
Current Mood:  worried
Current Music: "So Deep (Perfect Sphere Remix)", Silvertear
Tags: pets
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12:05 pm
![[User Picture]](http://l-userpic.livejournal.com/70349389/240226) [Link] |
Product shill
Just registered SizzlingKeys to the tune of $7 for a "family pack" (five-computer license). Highly recommended for all Mac OS X users. And virtually all of its functionality is available in the freeware version.
SizzlingKeys addressed one of the most painful parts of my transition from Winamp to iTunes: it adds configurable global hotkeys for music control (as well as a few bonus hotkeys for locking or sleeping the system). It's got a clean, simple interface and has been an indispensable sanity saver at work - letting me keep music on and mute/pause it at a touch when calls come in.
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EDITED TO ADD: Since I'm on a buying spree today, fish owners should check out the Screwcumber. (Hey! Get your mind out of the gutter. *thwaps your nose with a rolled-up newspaper*) Nice solution to the problem of how to sink fresh vegetables to the bottom of the tank.
Current Location: ~spiral
Current Music: Stiiv, "Naked Time"
Tags: pets, reviews, technology
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12:11 am
[Link] |
Actually embedding a video for once
Hilarious short cartoon that will make every cat owner out there nod in recognition:
(Via Kevin Drum.)
This is probably also a good place to mention Cat News, if you haven't yet gotten your daily dose of fuzzy goodness. (Youtube: episodes 1 2 3)
Current Location: ~journal
Current Mood:  tired
Tags: pets
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01:08 am
[Link] |
Being poor and eating well
After work tonight, I came home with an organic zucchini to feed Boing for the next three days. It cost me $1.45, which emptied my wallet* and got me to thinking.
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![[Baxil]](http://userpic.livejournal.com/46309021/240226 "Baxil") |
![[Boing]](http://www.tomorrowlands.org/images/lj/boing_icon.jpg "Boing the plecostomus") |
![[Boy]](http://www.tomorrowlands.org/images/lj/africa_kid.jpg "Starving African kid") |
| Diet |
Boxed pasta, chili, frozen pizzas, ramen |
Organic zucchini |
Staples from international relief efforts |
| Daily food costs (actual) |
~$5.00 |
$0.48 |
~$0.50[1] |
| Weight |
86 kg |
0.2 kg |
~15 kg |
| DAILY FOOD COSTS (weight-adjusted**) |
$5.00 |
$206.40 (!) |
$2.75 |
... Boing, you're lucky you're so damn cute.
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* Literally; I was eight cents short and had to cash in some serious penny-jar karma. I'm awfully broke this month. The forced time off during the holidays destroyed our income, and vet bills plus what little gift shopping we did destroyed our budget.
** Normalized to 86 kg so as to allow direct comparison.
Current Mood:  hungry
Current Music: po, "electric clouds": www.vgmix.com
Tags: geekery, pets
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07:02 pm
![[User Picture]](http://l-userpic.livejournal.com/62128449/240226) [Link] |
This applies on many different levels
Tasks I Never Thought I'd Find Myself Attempting, Let Alone Successfully Completing:
Catching cat vomit in my bare hand to keep from having to clean an expensive floor rug.
Part 1 in a continuing series.
Current Location: ~/brainstorm
Tags: my brain now hurts, pets
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01:33 am
![[User Picture]](http://l-userpic.livejournal.com/4335707/240226) [Link] |
Failure of nerve
I'm not good with needles. Never have been.
When I get something injected into me, my heart starts racing. When I have blood drawn, I get the cold sweats. I even fainted once (though in my defense, I hadn't had anything to eat that day). I can't even watch injections on medical dramas on TV -- the instant a syringe comes out, my fingers curl into claws, and I have to look away and knead the arm of the chair until I'm sure the moment's gone.
So when my wife's dear cat needed a trip to the vet, I got a bit nervous myself. When early tests came back in showing signs of kidney failure, I felt a subtle sinking feeling above and beyond the pain of impending pet loss.
Then I started reading about feline CRF. And the good news: "CRF cats may be able to live for several additional years with [regular injections of] fluids and the proper diet." Keep in mind that with Kady in cooking school, I'm pretty much it as far as cat caretaking. And the regular injections thereof.
Ocras seems to be responding to antibiotics. I really, really hope this is something acute.
Because he was pretty dehydrated when we got him to the vet. They asked us to give him daily sub-Q (subcutaneous -- which is to say, injected) fluids for a week until we could get him re-checked and re-tested. No sooner had this news been passed down than kadyg had to go back to the city for school ... and it was me alone in the house with a fluid bag, a cat, and a needle.
The first time, Ocras was remarkably placid. Which was good, because I was so nervous I didn't even get the needle into his skin. I opened the fluids' stopper and soaked his back. After a little toweling off and some breathing exercises, beginner's luck kicked in; and 100 ccs of liquid went in before we retreated to the kitchen for cat treats.
Then tonight.
Staggering home after a 12-hour day, I sit in the kitchen for a bit, waiting for Ocras to lie down so I don't have to simultaneously wrestle him down and handle sharp things. I scoot over a chair once he's calm, and gently thread the needle in.
This time, he winces. It's all downhill from there.
I get everything seated and turn on the water. Again, his back gets wet -- it must have slipped out in the motion. Stop, recenter, wait for his tail to stop thrashing, retry. He gets squirmy again and I'm not able to get a good puncture.
I give up temporarily and retreat to the bathroom, where Ocras likes hanging out. He comes in to join me and settles in. We try again. This time, not only is there wincing and squirming, but also meows of protest.
My hands are shaking, and the nausea is so strong by the time I give up that I have to lie down on the floor of the bathroom for a few minutes to calm myself. Ocras isn't getting his fluids tonight.
A week of this is going to be hellish. For both me and the cat.
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Update, 11/29: Much easier with an extra pair of hands. Thanks, Rob.
Current Location: ~/couch
Current Mood:  nauseated
Tags: misc life updates, pets
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10:22 am
![[User Picture]](http://l-userpic.livejournal.com/8403565/240226) [Link] |
distributed research request: pretty bird
One of these seems to have taken residence in the tree outside our house:
It's probably an escaped pet, and someone's probably looking for it. My understanding is that the best place to report those is city Animal Control, and I'll call them when they open up at 11 am. (kadyg says she heard the bird at 1 am last night, so it seems to have settled in.)
My question is -- what sort of bird specifically is this? (There are several more pictures at this link.) I haven't seen too many parrots/macaws/etc up close.
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Edited to add: Consensus is a blue-and-yellow (aka gold-and-blue) macaw. Thank you! And animal control has been called -- the guy thanked me and got a laugh out of my "I don't think it's native" deadpan. He fired back "Not yet, anyway."
Current Location: ~yuba
Current Mood:  "raaaawk"
Tags: pets, requests
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03:54 pm
[Link] |
Pet owners take note
dogemperor has done an excellent job of keeping on top of the growing issues surrounding the major pet food recall announced a week or so ago.
If you have any pets*, go read the post. In short, the potential danger appears to have spread far beyond the initial announcement. Virtually any household pet food (not just moist) made with wheat products within the last few months may pose a serious threat to your pet's health. Fer has done an excellent job of discussing what to watch out for, and which brands are known safe and known risks.
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* Okay, fish are probably safe.
Current Location: ~/computer_desk
Current Music: Dead Can Dance, "Towards the Within"
Tags: pets
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03:36 am
![[User Picture]](http://l-userpic.livejournal.com/51121964/240226) [Link] |
F15htank QOTD
I'll kick this short entry off with a relevant AMAQ question --
aknitwit asks, "Why do you spell 'fish' that way (f15h)? It looks like a password..."
( Short answer: L33tspeak. )
At any rate. kadyg and I were talking tonight, the conversation turned to fish, and on the prettiness of our p1ecostomus:
B: Well, some people would say plecos are ugly.
K: Boing's very pretty.
B: I think so too. But some people would disagree. Let's face it, plecos are shaped like ... like mandolins.
K: *giggles* Okay. If we ever get another pleco, I think we have to name it "Mandolin" now.
B: No ... we'd have to name it ( *dramatic pause!* )
Current Location: Feeding Boing at the f15htank
Current Mood:  fishy
Current Music: "FF7 RedXIIIRedux" OC Remix
Tags: ask me a question, meme, pets, wordplay
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03:29 am
[Link] |
Would you like fry with that?
In completely non-hiking-related news, I came home to a slightly more crowded house than the one I left.
Our clown loaches are getting big! And one of the guppies dropped a batch of fry, three of which have survived to adolescence. (That small diagonal line just above the center-left of the plant at lower right is one of them.) |
And it looks as though kadyg and I may need to pore over the metasyntactic variables again ... but I'm getting a little ahead of myself.
When we first set up our 46-gallon aquarium a little over a year ago, Kady and I figured that things would be a little easier in our little box o' f15h if we put together a "stag" tank -- no females for the males to get aggressive over. (This would also have the side benefits that the tank would have more booze-laced tiny frat parties; and that our felines wouldn't have to put up with endless soap operas during daytime FishTV™.)
Of course, we also figured that this was a pipe dream at best, neither one of us being particularly omniscient in the realm of fish sexing. Mindful of the stereotypical embarassment of pet owners finding out that their beloved George or Cojones is suddenly expecting a litter, I pressed to give our first batch of aquatic denizens names that would be suitably gender-generic. And because 1) I am a geek, 2) I had some weird, ultimately-aborted plan of giving the first f3sh temporary names and naming them by online poll, and 3) I am really a geek, I hurtled screaming off of the edge of generic into the abyss of metasyntactic.
(Yes, I named our first fish -- a tiger-speckled guppy -- "Foo." And "Bar" was bicolored, with a very sharp, straight separation between the silver front half and black back half. Kady and I chose the name "Boing" -- a Danish metasyntactic -- for our plecostomus, and it stuck. Perhaps because giving him a name suggesting that he was a tank-jumper ensured that he'd never get into the habit.)
Fast-forward several months. At which point it's pretty obvious that our "stag" tank has more "doe" than a pizza parlor. We'd been noticing for some time that poor Foo had an almost continuous escort around the tank, and Baz and Quux were getting their tails rather severely bitten in the contest to accompany the tiger lady. One of the other gups was getting Quite Hideously Large, and Foo was looking kind of preggers as well. Ah, the joys of the great circle of life.
Sure enough, one day we noticed some little swimming punctuation marks and a much thinner guppy.
"How cute!" I said, leaning down to eye the miniscule babies swimming blithely around the tank, as about 14 pairs of beady fish eyes tracked their movements. The tiny schlorp of salivating ichthyoid tongues echoed just under the hum of the water filter. "Let's name them sushi, sashimi, snack, morsel, and hors d'ouevre."
Fish, you have to understand, aren't particularly picky about cannibalism. And, while I could have gone out and gotten a tank partition to protect the new arrivals, the hassles of fish breeding seemed pretty large compared to the payoff: separate living quarters, all-new feeding strategies, new and expensive snacks for the babies, etc. Kady and I decided we'd just let the fry fend for themselves and see what happened.
By the next morning, our babies were down to just Sashimi. Sometime later that day, the adults found the garnish they'd been looking for, and he vanished too.
This cycle repeated at least once more (that we noticed). "Sashimi" became our generic fry name, a strategy which proved as effective as it was cynical.
Detail view of main picture. I scaled this to be approximately life-size if you click for the full view. Our school of neon tetras are all adult-sized, at about an inch long. You can see one of the guppy fry at upper left. Tiny little things! Very good at not being eaten, considering how much they're outweighed by some of our larger tank denizens. |
And then ... something very strange happened earlier this month. One of the guppies dropped a load of fry. I noticed three of them swimming around and pointed the poor doomed things out to Kady. And they survived the night.
Not only that, they survived the next day. And the next. And suddenly, it's been over a week, they've grown to a size where they'll only fit in the mouth of the larger fish instead of everything in sight, and it's looking increasingly likely that our tank capacity has increased by three.
I'll be darned. A batch of them finally out-thunk Darwin.
Current Location: 15 feet from the aquarium
Current Mood:  f15hy
Current Music: Old Soul, "Brightness"
Tags: pets
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02:16 pm
![[User Picture]](http://l-userpic.livejournal.com/9758701/240226) [Link] |
Jesus fish
One last pre-Baycon post, even though I should be working on the first issue of the newsletter now:
Our missing feesh is back.
Our neon tetra population has see-sawed ever since we introduced them to the tank. We first bought four; a day later, one completely vanished, so we bought another four and two of those died. (Total: 5) We at first thought there might be some neon tetra disease going around, but went to another feesh store and found out that it wasn't, and bought another four to keep the school size up. (Total: 9) There was another one wrapped around the pump shortly afterward; and then there was one swimming upside down in spirals who we eventually had to euthanize. (Total: 7)
Seven tetras. We've counted. I've gotten in the habit of checking every time we feed them just to make sure no more vanish.
Last night, there were 8 neon tetras in the tank.
The eighth tetra is still here this morning.
If he can spontaneously heal our remaining feesh of ich disease before we dump the treatment in, expect the distribution of little feeshy bibles and feeshy Chick tracts.
Current Mood:  gottaworkworkwork
Tags: pets
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04:43 am
[Link] |
Lizard early, lizard often
So, remember the 46-gallon aquarium I lizard won? kadyg is lizard asking what we should put lizard in it and YOU, yes lizard YOU, can lizard go vote in the poll.
Just fish sayin'.
(n.b.: Voting may not determine actual results. Bribes, however, might.)
Current Mood: random
Tags: pets
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06:41 am
![[User Picture]](http://l-userpic.livejournal.com/9758787/240226) [Link] |
Part II: The Good ...
So it's been a long week. But I tried to get my mind off of my server difficulties and just go attend the Journal's Employee Appreciation Party. Feeling appreciated does tend to brighten one's evening.
( Blah blah blah. Seriously. Boring stuff )
And the short of it is, I am now the proud owner of a 46-gallon, $499-retail-value aquarium, or at least a gift certificate thereto. 46 gallons! Holy smokes. That's practically big enough to start a salmon farm.
After Kady and I finished laughing in disbelief, we agreed that the best place for it and its 400 pounds of water is going to be in the bathroom where the washer/dryer would normally go. It'll make a nice nightlight, plus there's just something amusing about having fish in the room where you take your showers.
Now I have to figure out what the heck I want to do with a 46-gallon fishtank. Fresh water? Salt water? Terrarium? (Kady sounds quite opposed to snakes, but maybe there are other land-based pets that would work.) I'm told that salt water is quite a bit more maintenance work than fresh, and honestly low-maintenance sounds extremely appealing. But even if I'm just going to go with generic freshwater $aquarium, I'm not even sure what I should do in terms of fish and decor and algae and current and and and my brain hurts already. I haven't owned an aquarium since I was in grade school and virtually all I remember is that overfeeding worsens algae and some vague imprecations about chlorine and water temperature. Does seasonal care of fish differ? Do I need to buy warmer-water fish since we have a heater for the winter but not A/C for the summer? Should I go with native species in case they pull a "Finding Nemo" and escape down the toilet? What happens if they start breeding? How big of a fish will the 46-gallon tank support, and would I be better off getting a few huge fish or a school of tiny ones?
So, please, please feel free to drop your aquarium advice, suggestions -- or even purchase offers, should you want a new 46-gallon aquarium for less than full retail price -- here.
Current Mood:  ambivalent
Current Music: Hitoshi Sakimoto, "Temple of Kiltia"
Tags: pets
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