Minor Disaster and a New Friend.

It was supposed to be a relaxing Saturday morning. No company, no commitments, my husband brought in coffee at 9 am and printed out a crossword puzzle for us to solve together once I woke up. Then the call from downstairs - DD the older " Daddy, the fish tank is leaking"

He races down, as do I, and then we send up DD the younger for towels and go to the garage for buckets. We fill the largest bucket with water but the fish and shrimps hide in the rocks so we need more buckets for live rock so we can capture the animals. After about 30 minutes and most of the towels in the house, we finally have the leaky tank out on the deck and various containers of things around the living room/kitchen. The wool Karastan carpets are rolled up and luckily only slightly damp, but the wood floor is wet with salty water. But no more water pouring out of anywhere.

Some readers may remember this tank we set up just over a year ago. Or maybe the TAST piece that it inspired. My husband and I both loved seeing all the beautiful fish in the coral reef movies and we both love the sea, and we thought this would be our little bit of the ocean. But I'm sorry to say that after a year, the honeymoon was over. We had gobs of green hair algae everywhere, most fish we had tried in the tank died, and after reading more and more about salt-water fish, I had become troubled ethically by having a salt-water tank since the rock and fish are mainly from the wild.

So as we sit amidst chaos, we ponder the future of our tank. Do we get a new one or give the whole thing up? I called the fish shop we frequented and they would take the fish and shrimp and coral and even the live rock back. So we decided to give it up. It was a hard decision because we had become attached to the animals, especially the banded coral shrimp, Jose. He was fascinating because he had 2 sets of small clear claws that he used to sift through the algae for bits of food. By the way, the description on the page I linked to for a photo says they are peaceful, but Jose was not. Every new thing we put in the tank, including anemones, was poked at least once by Jose.

Once the living remnants of our abandoned hobby were safely delivered, we were left with a mess to clean up. I have never done so much floor cleaning and vacuuming in one day. I do not recommend this as a reason to clean the house, even if it does look quite nice down there now! Our final job will be a donation to the Jacques Cousteau Society in memory of our tank. I think saving the coral reefs is more important than having a poor substitute in one's house.

On a happier note, when I finally had a chance to sit down at the computer tonight, I had a lovely message from Anne in France, both here on my blog and on my Stitchin Fingers page. Of course the first thing I did was check out her web site and I found that she has a lovely 3-D garden (jardin) in her 2007 Broderies section in her Galeries section (my Canadian French from 20 years ago is just enough to allow me to get through a site in French as long as there are photos!) Be sure to take a look.

Well, I have some baby bibs to get ready for this week for a friends first grandchildren who are due at the end of June. They know it will be twins so I get to make two bibs. Then I'm back on to the CQ horse pillow. So time to stitch.

TAST 19 Basque Stitch

I've been waiting for just the right stitch to do an underwater scene. The Basque stitch reminded me of seaweed and polyp corals. We have two in our tank, so I have put them here; green button coral and yellow polyps. We have live rock in our tank too. The Hawaiian rock has lots of red algae and the Tonga rock is pale with green and brown algae on it. We don't have a clown fish yet - we will need to get a tank raised one because we don't have anemones. The background fabric is marbled in blues and greys - I thought it would be interesting for this project. Would you believe I found it at Hancock Fabrics?

One of my other distractions

As well as work and vacation distractions over the past month, we also have the distraction of a new marine fish tank. This has been a great experience for the whole family. A new pet store had marine kits on sale and we have always wanted a marine tank - we gave away our freshwater fish tank when we moved in 2004. We decided we really wanted a reef tank because of all the beautiful corals so we picked up a couple of books when we purchased the tank. My older daughter has read the books through a couple of times now so she is the expert in the house.

The first thing we learned was that making space in one place requires moving many other things when your house is at capacity. The shelf we moved to make room for the tank stand had to go in the guest room/library and the desk from that room had to be moved to the art studio/garage for the sewing machine, and the shelf for backpacks that was displaced by the desk had to move to the other side of the doorway where it displaced a metal shelf which was moved to the attic where it displaced a small chest of drawers which luckily fit in the guest room/library that really did need a chest of drawers anyway. This all took several hours to accomplish since drawers and shelves had to be unloaded and loaded.

The next thing we learned is that marine aquariums require patience, lots and lots of patience. After conditioning the water we put live sand in the bottom of the aquarium which had to sit for a few days. Then we had to get live rocks (from Tonga and Hawaii) and let them site for a while - luckily this was while we were on vacation so it wasn't too bad. Otherwise we would have been watching this for a week.
Then finally we put in a few corals and a shrimp and hermit crabs and two snails and a fish. Later that week we added another fish and then later another coral. Now we have to let things balance again before adding a few more corals and one or two more fish. We also put a blue backing on the outside of the tank to highlight the colour.

As you can see there is now some colour and movement in the tank.

I'm very fond of this rock with yellow polyp and green button corals.
This is Zipper (I know it is blurry but it is really hard to get a photo). He is a six lined wrasse. We also have a Hippo Tang (blue fish like Dorey in Finding Nemo) and of course her name is Dorey.

They sun polyps aren't open much yet and the Kenya Tree leather coral is sort of floppy although the polyps all come out each day. We are now getting some algae build up on the glass and rocks but I understand from the books that this is all part of the mini-ecosystem we are trying to create. Luckily there is a very good marine aquarium shop nearby that has been most helpful in answering all our questions and recommending the easiest and heartiest fish and corals. It is fun to visit the shop with all the beautiful aquaria filled with colourful and amazing fish and invertebrates. There are a couple of giant tanks, one with a giant clam, that are truly spectacular and I can't even imagine how much they would cost to set up and keep. For now I am quite happy with our 29 gallon tank and the interesting creatures we have so far.