Fish and Chips is the section of the famousfive website dedicated to Michael's interests in tropical fish and sad computing-related things. An odd combination I know.
There are hundreds of bristleworms in the tank, ranging in size from a few millimetres to about 10 cm. A few came in originally with the live rock and in the absence of natural predators they have had lots of fun reproducing.  They're not the prettiest of creatures, but they do a fine job eating up any left over food and other unmentionable things. They mostly lurk in amongst the rocks during the day, appearing in great numbers when the food appears.
Jaws is our Yellow Headed Jawfish - Opistognathus aurifrons - and is one of the most entertaining and active residents in the tank. Jawfish as the name suggests have large and powerful jaws which they use to move stones and gravel around to build protective burrows.
Previously our tank had an aragonite sand base, so to get things ready for Jaws' arrival we cleared some of the sand from one end of the tank and added about 10kg of crushed coral along with various bits of shell and small rocks to give him some construction materials. Pretty soon he had built his first home, and he's been busy ever since rebuilding and adjusting his burrow.
During the day he bobs his head in and out of the burrow, emerging whenever there's food about. In the evening he pulls a few stones over the entrance and disappears for the night.
Moby is certainly not the most beautiful of fish in our tank , and with his large downturned mouth some think he looks a bit sad. The fishtank god took pity on him recently and sent him a sign - in the style of the toastie that looked like the Virgin Mary. The green smiley just to the right of his head in this picture was a spot of algae that grew on the tank glass, just like that. Weird eh!
Apple have had a very successful run with their iPod? family of music players. The iPod classic has been followed by mini and nano devices where thousands of tunes can be packed into ever smaller devices. For those of us now entering the prime of life, these tiny devices pose a real problem: never mind how to read the microscopic displays: actually finding the next generation iPod pico in the first place may be too much of a challenge. Now where did I put my glasses? And what was it I came upstairs to get?!
So here at famousfive we have been working on a solution to what is clearly a gap in the market. Enter the iPad Mega. Music on the go for the visually challenged.
The inspiration was one of the lovely leaving presents given by my ex-Team (thanks chaps!). They rescued from the skip of redundancy an ancient relic from the period now known as "the good old days" when only the French and the Americans wanted to buy our company. It was an IBM ThinkPad 560X of 1999 vintage. In some post-ironic pre-lunchtime hypoglycemic state Graham decided to decorate it in the style of an iPod.
Graham had done the tough part - coming up with a striking new look for this piece of WEEE - so all that was left for me to do was the simple task of making the device play MP3s. Naturally without the help of software from Uncle Bill, which would in any case have had to have been erased during the ISO17799 asset scrapping process. It was as simple as 1-2-3, as you will see from the following easy-to-follow guide.
Oh yes, and to cross another summer of inactivity task off the list, I have made a short promotional video for the iPad and posted it on something called YouTube. It'll never catch on. Anyway - here it is:
Tropical marine fish like a nice constant temperature around 25°C. Heaters cope easily with winter time, but in the summer keeping the tank temperature down can be a big problem. The room where our tank sits gets a lot of afternoon sun and during the summer months the temperature can reach mid 30's, especially if we are away and the doors and windows have been kept shut.
Overheating problems got worse when I upgraded the lighting to metal halide, as the lamps also generate a lot of heat. To balance this I fitted a fan on top of the tank blowing over the water surface to provide air movement and increased evaporation. This has mostly been OK, but on several occasions we have lost tank residents during hot spells.
Fitting and aquarium chiller has been the obvious solution for a while, but last time I looked the retail price of a suitably sized unit was £400 - 500. This year, a number of enterprising merchants have been importing units direct from China and selling them through eBay. I picked up a new Hilea HC 150 unit for £160. The unit is quiet and has done a good job preserving the wildlife this summer. An added bonus is that the lower water temperature has kept algae reproduction in check, resulting in less problems from clogged strainers and inlet filters on the power heads and protein skimmer.
Terry is a Zebra Goby (Ptereleotris Zebra), also known by many other names including Zebra Torpedofish and Zebra Barred Dartfish. These are all apt descriptions as he certainly darts around the tank in a torpedo-like manner. He lives in a crevice inside the live rock, but comes out whenever there is any food around. He is quite colourful with a series of orange and blue vertical stripes along the length of his body. He is a carnivore and does a pretty good job of hoovering up whatever food gets put into the tank. He seems to get along with the other tank residents and hasn't been seen bothering anything else, despite being one of the largest (well, longest at least) fish in the tank.
You may have noticed in the last month or so the addition of a new box on the left hand side of pages on this site listing the locations of recent visitors to this site. Standard Joomla code lists the number of users recently online along with any named users signed in, but I thought it would be interesting to see where these visitors have come from and when they last visited. I have written a couple of simple modules - one that collects the data and displays the tabular data, a second one that I use to generate a Google map plotting the locations. The map can be seen by clicking on Recent Visitors on the main menu
Here is a map, courtesy of our friends at Google that shows from where in the world people have been visiting our site. Click on a marker for more information including date of last visit.
Loading GeoOnline Map
Want to know how it works? Read this article on the wonderful world of geolocation and mashups.
Rhubarb is a false gramma (Pseudochromis paccagnellae). He is a fantastic combination of colours, looking like he has been held by the tail and dipped in a tin of paint. False grammas can apparently be a bit aggressive, but while Rhubarb will stand his ground against other fish, he hasn't ever been seen bothering any of them. He is one of the few fish in the tank that doesn't seem to have any defined territory and generlly swims around where he pleases. This doesn't seem to bother any of the others that are more attached to a particular spot.
We have two large clumps of pussy or colt coral Cladiellia colti in the tank, split from a single small piece bought a few years ago. Like most soft corals it has amazing shape-shifting skills, shrinking down at night and extending again during the day. The clown fish have taken to one piece as their protective home, hosting in it like they would an anemone.
Fish and Chips
