My Apistos spawned!!!!! Saw the fries swimming free with mummy this morning before we left the house. Will have to keep monitoring them for 3 days, and remove the adults in a couple of days. 
Wheeee!!!! I’m so happy….. Can’t get any pics now. The fires are too tiny.
I have the rest of the week off, and decided that I should bring my parents for a spot of prawn fishing, since its been a while since they went fishing. Kyla who is in the afternoon session also decided to tag along and have some fun. Overall, I’m really happy we did this. My parents enjoyed themselves very much! No surprises when it was my mum who caught 5 prawns, dad with 1, Kyla with 1. A total of 7, but we lost 3 prawns through a torn net. 
Kyla looking bored.
Dad & Mum
I found a buyer for my first tank just a couple of days ago. I found the tank to be inadequate for what I wanted to do, with main complaints in the overhead filter and light department. Got a pretty decent price for it. I got a smaller tank (just like the office tank) instead. (30cm x 18cm x 19cm) Just about 2.5 gallons.
Bought a pair of Apistogramma cacatuoides “triple red”. Triple Red being the colour of the fish’s fins, which can be seen on it’s Caudal, Anal and Dorsal fins.
Heres the male.
Another shot of the male.
Heres one of the male flaring (to impress the female)
Heres the femal (Yellow in colour when she is ready to breed)
Its the 9th day since I set up the planted tank on the 30th of Dec 2008. The plants are thriving, and I need to perform my first trim VERY soon!
I finally got meself a small 30cm(L)x18cm(B)x18cm(H) tank for my desk in the office. Have been thinking about it for days now! 
Just filled it up today with cycled water from home, 2 baby guppies and a pair of Pelvicachromis pulcher, or more commonly known as the Rainbow Krib. Its a more common cousin of the Pelvicachromis taeniatus, or Nigerian Red, which I really want. But the Nigerian Red is S$55 a pair, and I’ve decided to only get it for home. The Pelvicachromis pulcher on the other hand is only S$3.00 a pair. I’m hoping they settle in nicely and lay me some eggs!
Its been 3 days since the tank was set up. Time for an update.
I bought HC from 2 sources. Te HC which I used for all of the substrate was purchased from Pasir Ris Farm, and grown emersed. The second source of HC was from a Local Fish Shop (LFS) called Colourful, opposite Thomson Medical Centre. I bought some HC on two coconut husks as a fail-safe, in case the HC on the lawn started dying on me. The HC on coconut husks were supposedly submerged for some time already, and should not have to undergo any acclimatisation.
So, I was quite surprised to see some of the HC on the coconut husks “melting”, while the HC on the substrate all look extremely green and healthy! Wow! Better dun say so fast. Have to give the HC on the substrate more time in the water.
Here is the full tank shot again.
Decided to scape my tank tonight, so that I can go into the new year with a brand new scaped tank. So, I headed to Pasir Ris Farm Rd 3 to pick up my plants direct from the plant farm. You get a fabulous price here rather than from any local fish shops as you skip them and go direct. But enough about my purchases…
Here is the substrate that I will be using for the tank. GEX soil, which is reasonably good. I got a total of 20kg worth, as the tank is fairly large.
Filling up the tank.
Ah.. finally done…
The girls helping me with the tank.
I’m attempting a fairly challenging plant called Hemianthus callitrichoides, or HC as better known in the industry. This plant is often grown “emersed”, that is in a terrestrial environment and dry. They are then sold to the local fish shops and placed submerged in a tank with CO2 and bright lights. In the transition from emersed to submersed, it is normal to experience what is normally known as “melting” or decaying of the leafs as the plant adapts itself to being submerged in water.
The HC I bought from Pasir Ris is grown emersed, and the chap at the farm picked out the HC direct from the ground! How can you be fresher than that! They didn’t have much, but I bought 70% of what they had. All in this red bag.
Here is the HC spread out on the table.
For the scape, I’ve decided that I wanted to scape a HC lawn with a focus point at the left corner where I would place 2 driftwood. These are the two pieces of driftwood I am using.
After tying some plants to the drift wood and arranging the driftwood to a position I liked, I proceeded to fill up the tank with a small tube. It would be a mistake to disturb the soil by the water as the water could end up being extremely cloudy.
At the same time while filling up, I began the painstaking and backbreaking task of planting the HC. Here you can see the final hard scape I will be using.
I tried planting while the soil was moist, but found it very tedious as the soil kept coming up. So, I decided to only start planting once the soil is submerged in water. Here, you can see that I’m 40% done with the HC. This alone took me close to 2 hours!
Heres a top view.
Stem plants come in small cute buckets. You have to remove the plants from the buckets, and free them from the corse rock cotton they are wrapped in. Each stem or plant must be separated before planting. This is how it looks like.
Wah.. the small tube was taking too long!!! Decided to change to the larger tube. Faster fill up!
After the numerous trips between the toilet and the tank to fill up pails of water, it is finally done!!!! Took me approximately 5 to 6 hours! Hope the scape is nice, and hope even more that the HC will survive! 
I did my tail end shopping for final essentials I need for the 2.5 ft tank setup this afternoon, and I headed out to Nature Aquarium just opposite Thomson Medical Centre.
Bought a pair of 55w Osram PL lights, giving me a total of 110w of sheer full spectrum white light at 6500k daylight colour. This works out to about 3 watts per gallon of water in my tank, which is just about right.
Also bought the required substrate and some drift wood. But will talk about those another time. For now… this is how it look like turned on.
I’ve been mucking around the aquarium forums and have been learning loads about planted tanks. Made me realise that the tank I currently have is really not a good size. So, I’ve been scouting around, and found out that a new tank of this size with proper cabinet support, etc could easily cost from S$600 upwards.
Not the kind of money I’d like to spend for a new hobby. So, I hung around the forums’ classifieds and finally found someone letting go of his tank for a humble S$88.
OK. I think its a good buy…. and this will keep me occupied for a bit while I now figure out how I wanna set up this tank.
Dimensions are 2.5ft x 1.5ft x 1.9ft (L x B x H)
Aquarium filtration inflow and outflow pipes can be so ugly….Urrgghhh….
Luckily there are glassware inflow and outlow lily pipes. The ones from ADA are about close to S$400 for a pair!!! Can’t justify them at that kind of price. Good thing ANS produces them at a fraction of the cost. Sure, they are more costly than normal, but are cheap compared to ADA Lily pipes!
The most important thing…. I am Happy!
Beautiful Glass Outflow Lily Pipe
Heres the Inflow and Outflow Pipes together. Suppose to be invisible… can see or not? Hee…
