I came back - that's why it got busy around here - missed all you guys. I've been busy being extra attentive to my aquariums. I "fired" my last assistant - she is just one of those people that have a continuous crisis going on in their life. They get too poor (often by having beautiful babies too young) and they just continue to struggle with husbands/boyfriends, daycare, pandemics, clothes dryers breaking down, Refrigerators breaking down, cars breaking down, fighting with sister/mother/boyfriend etc and generally letting their kids run their lives. She was in that group and she had a semi-major breakdown one night from all the stress and took herself to a local psychiatric hospital for about a 4 day stay and a lot of nice people to talk to. Her boyfriend stayed with the kids - he was unable to work his construction job due to the weather anyway. I will still give her a help up once in a while but it will be a gift - I got tired of her canceling water change appointments, then she also rushed through them and didn't do a good job like she used to - but we still are good friends - she was a LOT of fun to be with she just continues to make poor decisions and I can't fix that unfortunately.
Hired a 24yr old handyman, that is handy enough to shovel snow and do water changes - in fact he's at that stage where he's spending too long trying to get everything spotless. I finally told him that a good aquarium is probably never spotless unless everything in it is dead - so try not to be so compulsive. He brings his cute relatively well-behaved 4yr old daughter with him. She's great for about 2 hours then starts making all sorts of annoying noises and interupting and talking back just like a normal little 4 yr old. I was giving her blank paper and markers - I'm a firm believer it skipping coloring books and have kids really LOOK at things when they try to draw them, but in her case all I got was 50 pages of single color baby scribbles. Thought perhaps she was lacking in some intelligence but she is just lacking in imagination - her dad finally brought some coloring books and crayons to supplement my washable markers. Got a fairly good "staying in the lines" series of pictures so she's just compulsive like her father lol. Her mother is a supervisor over all the cake decorators/bakers in the city's primary grocery store chain, so things are looking up if they could just get Dad established. Dad just lacks education and experience but he's so easy on the eyes (I'm sixty so forget it) that I suggested he might try doing some local modeling jobs in addition to his other odd jobs. Sweet, hardworking good dad. And very reliable. I'm very happy to employ him and I pay very well. I always do - especially to those that are obviously working their asses off to get ahead in this hard world. But my budget limits me to two aquariums, Seriously thinking of getting one 100 gallon tank for all my rambunctious DoJo's and putting all the other fish in to my single 50 gallon then using one of my spare 29 gallon tanks to set up a "nano" salt water and reefing tank that only I would be cleaning - at least for a while. But I don't think I'm that great with fresh water fish care yet to spend that kind of money so I may wait. I'm just so intriguiged.
Hoping everybody else is well and getting a flu shot. I'm in the stage of "people with handicaps that would be made worse (like dead for me) if they were to get Covid. Checking everywhere daily and can't ever find a slot opening, I think they need to employ a few more techs and get ready for the free-for-all when anybody can get a vaccine. That comes after my stage is done - but given the size of the city they should have plenty of resources. I guess the problem is not being able to get enough of the virus but much larger states are managing just fine and are way ahead of Kansas. Getting tired of checking everyday already but it's only get worse if I wait.
fishlab.com
way to go mods!, we're third place!
) it lacks some info, mostly about ph and gh
I've seen you pointing a lot of people this way on the old forum. Sad that admin hasn't noticed yet. I guess that says it all.
