Nakhleh.Net - FishCam

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Note that this is my old fishcam page, dedicated to my freshwater cichlid tank. When I moved from California to Pennsylvania, the tank was broken down and the fish given to friends (no fish were harmed in the move). The 55 gallon tank now houses my snakes.)

A lame idea is born

Welcome to my FishCam. After one of my all-too-frequent impulse buying binges at Fry's Electronics, I found myself in the possession of a Logitech Quickcam Pro. Noting very quickly that it was cool, but more or less useless, I figured I'd do something fun with it. Since I don't have the time to hook up a Lego Mindstorms robot to allow internet control, chasing the cats remotely is out. So, I figured a virtual fishtank would be the next best thing.

My tank setup

My QuickCam is aimed at my 55 gallon freshwater tank. I'm using an undergravel filtration system with two Marineland Penguin 660 powerheads. A 300W heater, air pump (to drive the bubble curtain), and miscellaneous underwater decorations round out the arrangement. I keep the tank at 79-80 degrees F, with about a 7.3-7.4 pH. It's primarily a cichlid tank, although a few of my fish would take umbrage at that statement.

My Fish

1 Melanochromis Chipokae - They're Lake Malawi African cichlids, the male is blue and black, the female (now deceased) yellow and black. Their baby, who was growing up and was in the process of changing from juvenile to adult colors, recently died. The other surviving offspring of this couple is still alive and well, and currently the "big fish on campus" in the tank of my friends Tony and Allison.
1 Nimbochromis Venustus - Another Lake Malawi African cichlid. This guy has irregular patches of white and brown, with yellow coloration on his bottom third (non-standard, perhaps a morph of some kind?). When older, his head will turn blueish.
1 Maylandia (formerly Pseudotropheus) Estherae ("Cherry Red Zebra") - He's bright orange (and still tiny right now). This isn't the normal coloration for this species in the wild (in Lake Malawi), but it's a popular aquarium morph.
2 Labidochromis Caeruleus ("Electric Yellows") - These Lake Malawi cichlids are unmistakable due to their bright yellow coloration.
1 Green Terror (Aeqidens Rivulatus) - A South American cichlid. He changes his color a lot...from almost all off-white with a dark spot, or dark line, to dark with bands of white, to almost entirely dark. He is easily recognisable, however, because of the irridescent green on his "chin".
1 Convict Cichlid (Cichlasoma Nigrofasciatum) - Another South American cichlid. White and Black vertical stripes, with some blue, green, and red highlights when she's feeling happy.
1 Giant Danio (Danio Aequipinnatus) - I got this guy (along with another giant danio and two albino cory cats, who are no longer with us) to cycle my tank. He's relatively big and very fast, and thus, still around.
1 Synodontis Catfish (trying to confirm species) - An African catfish that is supposed to get along with cichlids, this guy actually spends most of the time hiding behind one of the powerheads at the top of the tank. He's light with dark spots, and has long, funky barbels.
1 Plecostomus - A algae-eating catfish, this guy is often "stuck" to the side of the aquarium, doing his thing.

Windoze Disclaimer

Since at this time my Linux server, which hosts this website, doesn't have USB ports (one more reason to upgrade :-) ), and I don't think the QuickCam is supported under Linux anyway, I am stuck running the camera on my Windows machine. That means that it's not the most reliable feed in the first place, and to make matters worse, I'll turn it off when playing games or doing other machine intensive tasks. Sorry, them's the breaks.

Fish News

4/21/02 - Okay, the new fish have arrived. To minimize the problems with introducing new cichlids, I got 4 at once (a N. venustus, M. estherae (cherry red morph), and 2 L. Caeruleus), did a water change, rearranged all the tank decorations, and fed all the fish. It seemed to have worked, no fighting broke out, despite the greatly different sizes of the fish. As it turns out, I'll be doing a couple more water changes soon too, it looks like my pH was too low, and the nitrates were getting high, perhaps that's what did in my venustus. It's entirely too easy to slack off on maintenance when all your fish appear healthy, but it can lead to bad consequences in a hurry...
4/20/02 - Another tragedy, my venustus, the king of the tank, died yesterday while I was at work How depressing. He seemed perfectly fine the day before, I don't understand what happened. He was 7 1/4 inches long, quite a beautiful fish. Look for some new additions to the tank in the very near future, I feel it's definitely getting underpopulated.
2/11/02 - Finally, I have used my new camera and macro lens to take some decent pictures of the fish. Not that the webcam isn't fun, but it doesn't really capture the subtle colors and magnificence of the fish. Check out the gallery and see what you think!
2/7/02 - Tragedy struck, as my "baby" (not really a baby anymore) Chipokae died suddenly and mysteriously today. He was fine this morning, no sign of sickness or injury, and dead this evening. Sigh, fish can be entirely too delicate sometimes.
1/31/02 - Wow, I'm a slacker....no news for a while, despite having one of my Chipokae's die, and watching the baby one grow up. Let's see... the fluval has been working well, although you do need to change its carbon media now and then (I knew that, of course, but I'm lazy). The fish that I originally thought was a venustus, and then later changed my mind and decided it was a livingstonii, has grown up, and changed his colors (his head is now quite bluish). As it turns out, he was a venustus all along. I hope all of you (any of you?) have been enjoying my fish... I set up the window as an active desktop component at work, so I can watch them all day as I am being productive. Hopefully soon I'll configure some of the X10 cameras that I have, so that there can be a "SnakeCam", and a "CatPostCam", etc., as well.
6/29/01 - Okay, I've given up on being able to keep the water looking any better than opaque with just the undergravel filter, even using two big towels to keep out the sunlight. Boy those cichlids are pigs, especially now that they're bigger. The Fluval 404 (never hurts to buy a little extra capacity) arrived this morning. I'll be hooking it up this weekend. It if doesn't do the trick, nothing will.
6/26/01 - Interesting note about the Melanochromis Chipokae behavior. I thought that the juvenile I gave to my friends Tony and Allison was female, because it was still yellow, and probably about 1.5 inches long. The only documentation I could find about when they change colors (they all start yellow, males change to blue) suggested that it happened at 1 inch or thereabouts. Anyway, when I dropped it off at their place, we looked, and I could see hints of blue around the head. Just barely there. For a week and a half, nothing changed. Then, they got some more cichlids to populate their tank (he was alone until then). That afternoon, he turned bright blue, all over. I'm guessing the presence of an adult male in my tank delayed the onset of the change for him? And the presence of other, unrelated species of fish acted as a catalyst? Weird, but I thought I'd mention it for anyone else looking for that info.
6/10/01 - Well, I've ditched Spotlife and am now properly transferring the pics to my own server. I'm still experimenting with the best way to display things, so the format / presentation may change unexpectedly for a while until I find something that works well, or grow bored tweaking things. So far it's working better, but please drop me an email if it's flaking out / not working for you. Also, my juvenile Chipokae has made the leap from my tank to my friend's tank. He looks so alone all by himself in the new 55 gallon aquarium. :-)
6/7/01 - Newsflash: I haven't been keeping up on the news. Several developments. Both my pleco and algae eater have died. I suspect, but can't prove, foul play on the part of the cichlids. I've given up on plecos in a cichlid tank now (having lost 3), and got a Synodontis (an African catfish). I still need to figure out its exact species. I've licked the algae problem for good now, by putting a towel over the side of the fishtank facing the window during the day. Works really well. And, after a serious tussle with my synodontis, I've quarantined my juvenile chipokae for "not getting along well with others". Thankfully, I have convinced my friends Tony and Allison to get an aquarium of their own, and my juvenile has "volunteered" to help them break in the new tank!
4/30/01 - The lights are back on now. Boy, algae is quite a pain!
4/23/01 - The lights are staying off again for a few days which should help lick the algae problem. Sorry!
4/18/01 - Ack! The water is green again. Stupid algae. I'm going to "half-light" conditions again, along with water changes, of course, to fix this problem. That's why the webcam is so dark, in case you're wondering. I wonder if this latest outbreak is due to the fact that I've been leaving the shades partly open to give my new Kentia Palm more light. Sigh....it's difficult balancing the needs of all the wacky stuff in my apartment.
4/9/01 - The tank needs cleaning again...hopefully tonight. Also, those Chipokae are pretty prodigious breeders...the first generation offspring is getting big enough to hang with the larger fish, and I just saw two more tiny fry hiding under the fake plants. I'm so confused; I can't quite figure out when she had them, but hey, the more the merrier, I guess.
3/5/01 - I'm terribly sorry, but it appears that I got my species confused. The fish that I was calling a Nimbochromis Venustus, is actually a Nimbochromis Livingstonii. The pictures that I had used to determine the species looked pretty similar...
2/28/01 - The new version of the Logitech software SUCKS! It seems to only be able to run for a few hours before crashing my entire system. Because of this, the fishcam seems to be down almost all the time now. I think I'm going to see if I can reinstall the old version to get things running again.
2/22/01 - I really liked my Green Terror. So, I went out to the Fish Tank (a local fish store) and got another one. He's a pretty big guy (I hoped he would fit in better with the rather belligerent fish in my tank if he was of a decent size). After a water change, and rearranging the decorations again (that definitely helps with introducing a new cichlid), he seems to be settling in quite nicely. And how about this for an amazing surprise. While rearranging the aquarium, you'll never guess what I found... I found one of the Chipokae offspring still alive, and hiding out under the plastic rocks! Amazing... she (or he, you can't tell by the color when they're young) is tiny! I can't believe that she has managed to hide and avoid the other fish all this time, without even being seen by me once. Well, life goes on, even in an aquarium.
2/22/01 - My poor Green Terror is no more. I had noticed that he hadn't been eating well the last few days, and that he was hiding more, and sporting dark stripes (he seems to have that pattern more when stressed), but there were no external symptoms that indicated that he was sick. Then, just last morning, he started to show symptoms, primarily frayed fins, so I quarantined him in a corner of the tank to protect him from the other fish. And then, less than 24 hours later, he was dead. That's the worst thing about keeping fish...even when you take good care of them, sometimes they succumb to bizarre and often fatal diseases...
2/15/01 - I finally got around to collecting a few snapshots from the webcam and posting a gallery of still images. Check out the new link at the top of the page!
2/8/01 - Well...two 30% water changes and a few days with the lights off seemed to have helped. The camera is back on. There were some quirky issues with the Logitech software...I thought it kept crashing trying to look for software updates, but it really was just locking up for 10 minutes. What a crappy design...it even said "not responding" in the task manager, so you know they weren't properly managing the event loop. I manually upgraded, which caused me to have to re-register with SpotLife, and changed my URL, but that's what you get for relying on goofy windows software.
2/3/01 - Okay, the water is getting way too green. I've taken the precaution of leaving off the tank lights for a few days, which should help control the spread of algae, and I'm going to do a series of water changes. Unfortunately, the side effect of turning the tank lights off is that the webcam will be unavailable for a few days. Sorry for the inconvenience!
1/25/01 - The water in the tank is getting quite cloudy, with an unhealthy green cast to it. I'm not sure what's causing this. Julia suspects the zucchini that I have been feeding the pleco. I think I need to step up the water change cycle, perhaps do another one this weekend... At least the female chipokae seems to be all healed.
1/10/01 - The whole breeding thing didn't work out too well. Despite the female being isolated in a netted off area, the fry didn't make it. Oh well... Also, the female has a nasty sore on her mouth pouch, I'm not sure what the deal is. I'll add some medicine to the water and see if it helps.
1/02/01 - I discovered over the holiday break that my Chipokaes have been busy. She's got quite a mouthful going... (the Lake Malawi cichlids are mouthbrooders). I have isolated her in a little netted area, so she can hopefully have some peace.
12/27/00 - One note for posterity. It appears, at least from my experience, that cichlids don't mix with cory cats as well as I thought. Maybe I should clarify that...they don't mix well at all if you are gone for 5 days and your cats happen to knock your automatic feeder off the fishtank. Suffice it to say that there wasn't much left of him, although all the other fish are just fine.
12/14/00 - Well, the cichlids are growing fast, and looking good. The cory cat is blind, but seems to be doing just fine, except that he runs into the other fish a fair amount. The strange monolith that should be visible in the fishcam is a cool granite obelisk that I found at a discount rock store.
12/06/00 - I just did a partial water change. Hopefully the tank should look a little less green now...
12/03/00 - It appears that spotlife.com is down, so that means that so is my fishcam, for the time being. Never mind...only a short interruption.
12/02/00 - The cory catfish aren't doing so well. I bought them originally to cycle the tank, so it's not a big loss, but still, I was hoping that the cichlids wouldn't pick on them too much. Well, they are, and the results aren't pretty. One is already dead, and the other is sort of missing his eyes. On the positive side, though, my new pleco (I can't seem to keep plecos alive, it's a long story) seems to be doing well. Keep your fingers crossed.
12/01/00 - On the advice of a guy at the local aquarium store, I got some crickets to feed to my cichlids. Quite an impressive sight (and possibly a video if I do it again). Quote from Julia: "Wow! I can see the entire inside of his mouth, and it's *all* cricket!"

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