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went to bed at 4am, woke up at 9am

eliza leave to have lunch with her brother around noontime

moved the content of my 7 gallon mini bow to a regular 10 gallon aquarium tank in anticipation of the LED tank light arriving next week:

i still keep an aquarium even though my last remaining fish died while i was in china. i keep the tank because of the live java ferns, which can only grow underwater. i think i also kept the tank thinking one day i'd get some new fish, but it's been a year and a half since i returned from china and that still hasn't happened yet. what i'm left with is an empty tank that has a clump of java fern growing on a large piece of driftwood. i've had this colony of java fern for a long time, purchased in 2006, almost 10 years ago. there was a time when it did very well, and my aquarium was filled with so much java ferns that i was worried there wouldn't enough room for the fish. i've tried other plants a well, but only the java ferns have survived this long (i had some elodea that lived for a long time, but eventually it died).

today i was moving everything from the minibow 7 into a more standard-sized 10 gallon aquarium. the minibow is a perfectly good fish tank, with a curved glass façade that makes it appear larger than it really is. but the one big problem with the minibow is it uses a weird-sized fluorescent bulb (15") that has to be specially ordered online. the price of more-energy-efficient LED aquarium lights have come down that i was looking to replace the old light, but it's hard to find any of the right size that fits the minibow. the old light seriously needed replacing, as the plastic housing has be slowly crumbling apart from light-induced aging, and the fluorescent tube itself is so old (purchased back in spring 2012) that there's hardly an usable light for the java ferns to grow. that's why yesterday i bought a new LED aquarium light strip from ebay (beamswork EA timer 6500K LED aquarium light freshwater plant 18", $22.95). the caveat is that it will only fit on a standard 10 gallon tank, hence the transfer.

with no fish in the aquarium, i've sort of abandoned routine maintenance like periodic water changes. there was a time when i did it more frequently, but that was to control the slime green algae that seemed to take over the whole tank. i'd scooped out the algae which came out in big booger blobs, then siphon a bucket of tank water, to be replaced by fresh tap water. whatever i did seemed to help because the green slime algae never came back. once the algae problem was solved, it wasn't that important to do frequent water changes. at most i'd top off the tank whenever the water was a bit low, but otherwise i never really took care of it. and since i had the fluorescent light running off of a timer and the water filter operating 24/7 (despite no fish), the aquarium sort of just took care of itself.

but i still remember the glory days of my aquariums, and i'm hoping by replacing the light with more energy-efficient-but-brighter LED lights is a step in that direction. my dream is to get the tank thriving with plants again, and once i get that going, i might finally introduce some fishes.

arrived at my parents' place around 3:30pm. helped my gand uncle set up auto payments on his cable, gas, and electricity bills. bought new checks for the corporation, as well as a new stamp.

sister came to parents' house to make dinner without first asking anyone. when we asked her about it, she argued we'd already agreed and then stormed off with her dog.

after dinner i biked back to cambridge. i had a craving for brie and foie gras, and snack on some with a bit of bread. brie is like a mellow version of a butter spread. foie gras tasted better than yesterday, a complex sweet and salty taste, with a coppery aftertaste.

feeling super sleepy, might have to go to bed before midnight.