Second full day, in which I photograph some fish

First up after morning checks (all fine) was to clean the filters. The screens get cleaned daily and the filters get cleaned (at a minimum) once per week on the basis that 'prevention is better than cure' and keeping filtration systems squeaky clean is easier in the long run than dealing with skanky, furry, smelly, gunged up filters. By far.

Whilst Mark finished off, having shown me how to clean the filters (turn pump off, switch air to run into the barrel at the base, drain barrel, use hose to jet-clean the screen and around the bottom of the screen-filter bit, then loosen the pump hose in the base of the sunken barrel to wash out all the rubbish, replace hose, flush everything through, replace overflow pipe/plug, refill) I ran to get my camera and leave it to warm up in the tosai house. Some beautiful photos ensued - see all of them here. Thoush some of my favourites I'll post below.

Starting with this little guy trying to eat a bubble


You get a lovely (if slightly shallow) feeling of popularity when you enter the tosai house, because the little guys are all SO pleased to see you. It's a shallow feeling because really they only see you as a potential source of food.

Mark fed them so that I could snap them as they gathered around















These guys were my favourite pic of the day. The chagoi do seem to be living up to their reputation for being really friendly fish. They were keenest to come and see what the strange lady was doing putting a weird black box-y thing so close to their home. It was such a very splashable box-y thing, too!

The other thing I never knew - you can make a brilliant impressionist (or impressionfisht - see what I did there?) style photo by messing up the flash when trying to snap a tankful of shiny little koi. Great stuff.






In Other News
I learned how to strim. With a big strimmer. Mark taught me to use it and gave me all the PPE (ear defenders and visor thingy - thank GOODNESS for the visor thingy cos halfway through strimming, something 'thwunked' off it, about an inch from my eyes!) and off I went, while he spoke to a visitor.

I strimmed my little heart out. At first I thought I wasn't being effective enough, then I ended up being far too effective and ploughing a few little furrows with the strimmer. If you want the bank of your reed-bed thoroughly mangled, I'm your woman. Fortunately I got the hang of it pretty quickly and there's now a nice swathe of bankside about 30m long which looks lovely and clear. Mark was pleased, and that's really the point - I'm learning.

After lunch (and a quick massage of the old arms - city dweller - not used to strimming for an hour or so) we cracked on with the chainsawing (still not me) and the throwing of stuff on the bonfire, which Mark re-ignited in about 5 minutes using yesterday's ashes. It roared and burned and we cleared a couple more trees. Mark got a couple of pics of me by the fire, so when I get them, I'll share. There's a big loopy grin all over my face because it was great, great fun.

I am still learning though, not just enjoying myself - promise!