Almost had a disaster

The second day of the Christmas break was very hot with temperatures almost touching 40 degrees. I decided to do partial water changes in both my tanks. It was all routine and everything should have been completed in just 20-30 minutes.

I started with my 100 L tank. I recently changed the lights of this tank and was under the impression that the lid was well secured. The lights are well secured to the lid but I found out that the lid itself is not. The good thing is I always switch off the mains for all the electrical in and around the tank whenever I am doing water changes. I was trying to remove the filter behind the lid and somehow the lid came off and went straight into the water. The end that went into the water has the ballast. I pulled it out quickly and thought there goes all the money for the new lights down the drain. I left the lid with the lights out in the hot sun and continued cleaning the filter and finished the partial water change. At least all the fish were fine.

I then started with the other tank and decided to rinse the filter media of the Sacem filter as well. I had not touched it since I had set it up and this would be the first time I was going to clean it. All that could go wrong started to go wrong. First a clip broke and I had to glue it back. I was not able to get the filter to shut airtight. As soon as I opened the valves the lid started to come off and the water started siphoning out. I however figured it out quickly that since I had the inlet and outlet valves shut when trying to close the filter lid there was no where for the air to escape. I had to open one of the valves and make sure that before it starts siphoning out the water, quickly close the lid.

Fortunately I was able to fix the filter and its still running without any leaks...so I don't need to spend on a new filter. Luckily for me the hot temperature on that day helped to dry out the lights as well. I left it overnight to dry and tested it the next day only once I was sure there was no water at all. I first tested without the globes to make sure that at least the circuits were not shorting. Once that did not cause any sparks or tripped the mains, I connected the globes. Woohooo...they worked. 

From now on I have decided to work on only 1 tank on any given day. 

New Fish and New Lights

I got some new fish for my second tank. I got two Guppies and four Bristlenose catfish. The Guppies straight away went for the Platy fry, but they are now few weeks old and were easily able to hold their ground (water :-)).

The drift wood in the second tank is not water logged after almost 2 weeks and I have to hold it in place with rocks. As a result I have to wait a while longer before I can set it up. I have also moved the three adult Platy from the old tank to the new one. They are settling slowly in the new tank and have not bothered the fry.

The Platy fry are enjoying the larger tank and I can see their growth rate has increased considerably. The plants in the new tank are also showing good growth. I am however planning to add some fine gravel to the tank since the current one is very coarse and not suitable for growing plants. Here are some photos of the tank as it sits now.

New Tank (rock is holding down the drift wood)

Stem Plants are growing much better in the new tank 

 The lights of my old tank went off today and I had to look for replacement. The replacement tubes were pretty costly and they are not standard size and only need ones supplied by Blue Planet. I changed the hood and the light fittings as it would have cost almost as much as new tubes. The new lights are a lot powerful. I now have 2 X 24W T5 (Aqua Zonic Super tropical Pink and Sun-Lux 10000K). This should help spur some growth in plants like the Hair Grass. I may reduce the length of time that the lights ON from 8 hrs to 6 hrs so that there is no Algae breakout. I will have to keep a close watch for the next two weeks to find out how the plants and the fish respond to the brighter lights. Eventually once I know how the tank responds I will  increase the time back to 8 hrs.

First I removed the lid to which the old lights were attached and then used the brackets that came with the new light fittings. However, the tank lost all the glory...the black top with the lights and filter within the hood makes the tank look really good. I have managed to fit the new lights to the lid and have placed it back on the hood. Its looking good but I am not sure if the distance (2in) between the lights and the water surface is going to cause any problems. I have glued the lights to the lid and also secured it using fishing line. Here are some photos after changing the lights. I am also adding a couple of photos for the new tank.

New lights (tank without the lid)

Fixed the new lights under the lid. You can see the fishing line on the top that holds the lights.

Full view of tank.

Setting up the Sacem Filter

The second tank is now ready and has around 20 Platy fry. Initially I wanted to keep Mollies, Platys and Guppies but since the fry are only couple of weeks old I will wait before I add more fish. It was fun getting the second tank ready. I purchased this tank from eBay and it came with a Sacem filter that had half the parts missing.

Sacem Marathon 500

I had to put together the rest of the filter parts in order to get it working. Its does not look pretty and since I don't have a proper cabinet, all the wires and pipes are hanging around the tank. To start with the filter did not have the necessary connecting pipes. It had the spray bar and the suction pipe but nothing else. It gave me the excuse to run to the hardware shop and try to find something that could help me get it going. I found some pipe connectors that were 19 mm and some plastic tubing that was 16 mm. The simple trick to get the tubing fit over the connectors was to dip the tube ends in hot water for a couple of minutes to make it soft. It then slides easily and fits really tightly once it cools down.

 

I also got some valves that I fitted inline with the inlet and outlet tubes. I plan to use these during filter cleaning. I also connected a "T" joint (please see the picture below) which I use to refill the water and prime it after cleaning the filter. I had to make sure the opening at the top lies above the water level in any of the other pipes so that water flows down and down not flow out of it. Maybe fitting this in the inlet pipe would make more sense. In a hurry I fixed it in the outlet pipe of the filter/pump. The pump force is enough to push the water out and hence I have to make sure top of the pipe is nicely secured. However it works fine right now. The Sacem model that I have does not have the priming and shut off valves like the newer filter. It however works pretty well and it not that noisy.






I gave up trying to rotate the images so they displayed correctly. Even though I tried multiple times, the blogger just didn't display them properly. Both the images should have been rotated counter clockwise by 90 deg.





I got some nice drift wood and am waiting for it to sink. Once it sinks I will rearrange the plants and upload the photos. The tank cycled pretty fast since I had used water, plants and stones from my old tank which would have been covered by good bacteria (Water from the old tank may not have really helped since the helpful bacteria cultures are on solid surfaces and in the filter. The plants and the rocks would surely carry good bacteria.). Also the tank only has platy fry so the bio load should be very small. 

Pastebin Script - send Syslog message

In the earlier post I covered scanning pastebin for a particular string of interest and write the paste to a database. I added a small feature to the script so that it can send a syslog message whenever a Paste of interest is found. The code goes exactly after the database write and is really simple.


sock = UDPSocket.new
data = "CEF:0|CERT|Script|1.0|CustomScript|Pastebin Monitor Script|8| request="+url
sock.send(data,0, 'SYSLOG_SERVER', 514)
sock.close

I choose to send message in CEF format since many SIEM use this and can easily normalise the message. The actual pastebin link is passed in the message as "url". 

Second Tank

I purchased a second tank from ebay.

Dimensions - 77cm X 36cm X 45 cm (LxWxH)
It came with a Sacem 500 Marathon external canister filter. Half the things were missing, so it was fun trying to get it working. Also priming it was a pain, though I think I have found a trick to fix it. The tank also has a 26W tube for the lights. I want to take up a project some time later next year to fix the lighting of both the tanks.

The tank also came with some gravel, but its very coarse and not really suitable for growing plants. I did not change it though. I rinsed it thoroughly and washed the tank with concentrated salt water. I did not want to use any chemicals and since I plan to keep Swordtail, Platy and Mollies which like a little salt in the water, even if a little salt was left behind, it would not be a problem.

I  have the following plants in the new tank now and am waiting for it to cycle to start stocking it.

- Bacopa
- Narrow leaf Ludwiga
- Val
- Java Fern from the other tank
- Ambulia from the other tank
- Lace Fern
- Chain Sword from the other tank

I also added some water from the old tank to it to get the bacteria culture so that it cycles quickly. I got the water tested today from the LFS and all parameters look good. It was very tempting to get some starter fish and start stocking the tank. However, the starter fish are not what I want in the tank long term and hence I will avoid them as far as I can.

I will post some snaps of the new tank and the things I did do get the filter working later on. I still need to get the drift wood to sink and set up the plants before taking some snaps. I will later move the 3 Platy and all the fry from my first tank to the new tank.