I now know how fish feel when we suddenly add a bigger filter.
Yesterday evening we had a wind burst, a sudden violent downdraft and swirl that walloped us with rain and sent everything flying. All the coloured leaves from the maple by the front window are gone - stripped off in seconds, and the neighbour's old wooden rabbit hutch is on its back halfway across the edge of our lot. It hit, lasted a very short time, and everything returned to normal, except the sunset clouds were sulphur yellow while the sky was purple, for a bit.
It was impressive. I've only been on one or two of those before. I was about to walk the dog when it hit - glad I was slow moving on that one. A sudden wind, total mayhem, and gone.
I keep a notebook on my fishroom projects and while it's dull reading, I looked it over last night. I spent all of last autumn and winter trying to keep the warmth down in the fishroom, as the dehumidifier brought it up once the room was sealed against the outside cold. I'm approaching it differently this year, regretfully accepting that some of my older killies are just going to time out (they live 2-3 years) unbred, because the conditions aren't right for them. The ones that are breeding now are the ones that have adjusted, and I'll do everything I can to keep them going.
My focus will be on fish for slightly warmer water, mainly my 4 dwarf Cichlid species and my tetras and African barbs. I'm resigned to 23-24c (73-75f) water in there, but there's a lot I like that can thrive in that. I'm going away for over a week soon, and did a little census of what's breeding - right now I have fry or juveniles of a bunch of species out there - 1 Cichlid, 2 tetras, 2 catfish, 2 lampeyes, 1 anabantoid, 2 livebearers and 5 Aphyosemion killies. So I should be able to supply the new local fish club with some interesting auction species, and keep these fish going for myself.
I'm not a good record keeper, but it comes in handing to give an overview of what works and doesn't. I'm sure most of us have forgotten a lot of details about the things that we've worked to learn.