Joe and Jamie’s Blog

While we picked up the African frogs, we also picked out some new playmates for Bubbles. Jamie liked the Calico Fantails and I liked the Black Moor goldfish. Splotch is the Calico Fantail and Brutis is the Black Moor. Splotch has a black spot on one side and not the other, kind of like a splotch of paint on the floor, hence the name Splotch. I named the Black Moor Brutis, after the big guy in Popeye that always beat on Popeye and went after Olive Oil, because as soon as he was let out of the store’s bag he went after Splotch and was bullying him around. Thankfully he stopped after the first few minutes and hasn’t done it since, but it gave me the idea for his name. I guess Brutis needed to show dominance, but Bubbles is almost twice his size so he calmed down when he came over.

We cleaned out their tank before we purchased them Saturday. As you can see this was the main highlight of the day. It took a long time to clean out both tanks completely. They are very happy together. What I learned from the unfortunate Doodle accident, I am pretty sure these fish will be fine. We started them all out together in clean water so they can muck it up as a family. Enjoy the pics and flick at the end.

Saturday Jamie and I went down to Petco to get some fish and frogs. During our last visit we noticed some African frogs that were in a tank with some fish. We were interested because it was odd to see frogs in with fish, mainly because we didn’t think frogs stayed in the water 100% of the time. Apparently these frogs do. The African frogs don’t grow more than 2.5 inches.

We had set up the old five gallon wish tank prior to going to the store. Just had to pick up a heater and a filter for the tank. We needed a cover as well, but they store was out of them. I had to rig a top with some leftover fiberglass mesh to replace screen windows. Essentially the same stuff without the nice plastic edge around it.

We bought three of the frogs and decided to name them Bud, Weis, and Er, after the famous three frogs from the Budweiser campaign a few years back. I know, I know, how original. Eh, whatever, I own the Budweiser frogs and you don’t

Enjoy the pictures and the video.

Apparently for a reason that has yet to be told to me my server was down for 8+ hours today. I have never been so frustrated before. I asked many times and never received and answer besides “hardware issue” which annoys me even more. I mean don’t they have a fail-over routine or and sort of BDR device. No reason why if it was going to be 8 hours and I complained as many times as I did that I couldn’t have been moved to another server temporarily. True more work for them, but that’s what I pay for.

I apologize to all my readers out there, this was beyond my control.

So after all this, as soon as my plan comes up for renewal say bu-bye to this host. This was the last straw.

Here’s another little toy I finally bought. Jamie’s camera doesn’t use the typical digital camera  USB cord, it has some weird, funky, bulky connector that is bundled with the audio cables as well. Needless to say it has become a hassle for me when I want to pull pictures off of it. I used to go to her laptop and transfer the files to my computer because I found it easier with the SD slot in the laptop than that silly cable on mine.

Any-who, I broke down and purchased a Transcend TS-RDM5W USB 2.0 Multi-Card Reader reader for my computer last week from Newegg.com. Price was about $18 straight to the door. It accepts every kind of digital media there is out there today, even those little itsy-bitsy micro-SD chips, which Jamie’s phone uses coincidentally. I read all the reviews and based my pick on what other people thought. I don’t typically do that, but I have never had to buy a card reader before. It has been pretty good so far. The only annoying thing is that it uses four drive letters for the slots and I needed to play the guessing game as to which slot was which drive letter. As soon as I found out I labeled each one and changed the drives letters to my liking. I transferred pictures from a SD and xD card at the same time and it is working just as fast as USB flash drives and a bazillion times faster than that stupid cable!

Card reader in action, lookout now!

Crappy photo, but vioala anyway. This is what happens when you open and throw away the case before you look at the pictures to see if it came out.

Last week I bought a new flash drive off Newegg.com for Jamie since she lost her old one. I purchased a 4GB drive from OCZ Technology. I have used their flash drives religiously in the past and never had any issues. Always fast data transfer rates and never corrupt/missing/unreadable data. I highly recommend this brand, as well as Newegg.com for their prices. Can you believe this was only $14.00 delivered to my door? Remember when 4GB flash drive was unheard of?..I think it was only last Tuesday…

I have some unfortunate news, Doodle has passed away.

When I woke up this morning Doodle was acting very strange. He was near the top of the tank barely moving, just floating with the current. I went near him, but he swam to the bottom so I figured it couldn’t be that bad. I started to research this while at work today and found several reasons why this could be happening.

1. Overfeeding or bad diet can cause digestive problems. – I rule this out because Doodle was new and he didn’t eat much at all. Bubbles comes to the top to eat and would eat all the flakes before Doodle got them. I also hand fed Doodle because of this, so I know he only ate a flake or two since Saturday.
2. Swim Bladder issues – I rule this out because he had no problem swimming around until this morning. So unless he developed it overnight (which now I think he actually did) then it wasn’t this.
3. Dirty water conditions – I still think this is why. Bubbles was in that water for two weeks before Doodle, so Bubbles was used to the conditions, Doodle was not. With just Bubbles all I did was change the water once a month which was fine, but now that there was two I should take out at least 15% of the water each week.

I had Jamie run to the store and get two gallons of water and change it out because of #3. Doodle responded better for a bit, but didn’t recover. Jamie went to the store to get test kits for the water when my mother found Doodle behind the filter on his side.

So farewell Doodle, we barely knew ye. You were the best looking Telescope goldfish Petco had, sorry you had to go.

Off to Petco to get some test kits now, possibly a Doodle2 later tonight….maybe Doddle Jr or Doodler, not sure how the sequel name will go yet.

[UPDATE]

Jamie and I went back to Petco last night and grab a test kit and then headed home. We tested the water and the pH, hardness and nitrate leves were just fine. Nitrite was a bit high and the ammonia levels were a bit more on the stress than safe side.  We plan to change out two additional gallons of water this weekend before purchasing another fish. I talked with the people at Petco for a long time last night, going over everything. I learned that we did pretty much everything correctly and that it could have been anything that killed the fish. They said that it could have just been the fish itself and that it probably wasn’t anything serious that would affect the other fish. I tend to agree with them now, especially after Jamie read that Telescope Goldfish are the hardest goldfish to care for. They are not recommended for beginners (that’s what we are obviously) and that they are prone to disease and die more often than others.

So we think we may hold off on the Telescope Goldfish again, unless we use our second smaller tank for it by itself. We now have our eye on a Black Moor or Calico Fantail. We’ll see this weekend which one wins I guess.