Year: 2025

Aquarium Gardens – Peterborough

Posted on by Andy Pierce

I love Aquarium Gardens.  Such a great aquascaping shop.  They recently opened a new larger operation in Peterborough, so I thought I’d check it out.  Owned by Dave Pierce (no relation) they stock plenty of aquascaping kit and plants.  They also have a showroom where you can get some inspiration.

They only moved in two months ago – used to be in St. Ives – so most of the scapes have a newish look to them.  It does look like some might have been moved from the previous location.  I’m sure that was a serious challenge!

Aquascapes look great

The scapes all look great, even the newish ones.  No algae anywhere in sight and the water always looks sparklingly clear.  Interesting most of the scapes have a white background or even a lit white background.  I think I prefer without.

Aquarium Gardens water parameters

Aquarium Gardens uses out-of-the-tap water from Peterborough which is going to be just rock hard.  They don’t worry about that.  The idea is if the plants can grow and look great in their tap water, they will work for customers located wherever as well.  They do inject CO2 pretty aggressively and their lights are really bright.

Coming home with purchases

I didn’t actually need to buy anything, but hey, you have to play nice.  I came home with Lobelia cardinalis ‘Mini’ which might be the same as the Lobelia cardinalis ‘Dwarf’ I tried previously in the Fireplace aquarium.  This time it’s going in the low-tech Shrimphaus.  Also for the Shrimphaus, some Helanthium tenellum ‘Green’, which looks pretty similar to the Helanthium bolivianum ‘Quadricostatus’ which did well previously.  Finally, some (more) Rotala rotundifolia ‘Blood Red’ which looks so amazing in Aquarium Gardens and which has struggled mightily for me in the Fireplace Aquarium – probably not enough light.

 

Cookie permissions

Posted on by Andy Pierce

You may have noticed a new request for cookie permissions on the Fireplace Aquarium.  Nothing nefarious here, Google Analytics and such.  Ordinarily I wouldn’t be bothered with this kind of thing but I was notified that Microsoft Clarity would do something threatening (I didn’t really pay attention to what) if the situation was not fixed.  Seems the way of the future with Google heading that way as well. I do use the Google Search Console mainly to track whether anything has gone wrong with how the site interacts with the world. 

loss of Google indexing
loss of indexing

Here’s an example of how things can go wrong.  See the dip in clicks and impressions that started in early June this year?  That triggered a lot of calls to Dreamhost support because apparently Google was blocked from accessing the entire site.  Eventually things got fixed and all back to normal.  Still, it was helpful to be able to see there was an ongoing issue that needed resolution.

Implementing GDPR-compliant cookie permissions

Ok, having decided to go the GDPR compliant route, next question is how to do it?  Turns out there is a relatively harmless WordPress plugin called CookieYes (although it is also totally fine with me if in response you say “Cookie NO!”) which has lots of people using it and excellent ratings.  I installed it and it was mostly straightforward to get going.  Then it got complicated…

Google consent mode

Google has what they call ‘Google Consent Mode‘ (GSM) which similarly ensures all good with cookie permissions.  This is NOT easy to implement correctly.  The CookieYes platform kept telling me it wasn’t turned on, or was turned on but didn’t happen in the right order, or perniciously (from my point of view) that “Default consent set too late” which apparently is also a deal-breaker.

I don’t think a human can make it work.  Solution:  get an AI to help.  Progress on AI has been absolutely phenomenal over just the last six months.  These went from semi-joke just-make-a-bunch-of-stuff-up to actually incredibly useful.  In this case I went with ChatGPT5 (pro version).  Many, many back-and-forths and uploaded screenshots later, it all came together in a brilliant No error detected from CookieYes.

Unlike some of its predecessors, ChatGPT5 doesn’t really get very philosophical but I did ask it why the whole process was so complicated and difficult.  Here’s what it said:

  • Many knobs, many silos: CMP (CookieYes), GTM, GA4, WordPress, Site Kit, Autoptimize, cache/CDN. Each has different UX, terminology, and sometimes no public API.
  • Load‑order is brittle: One plugin adding a snippet in the wrong hook breaks compliance. AI needs reliable programmatic control, not just UI clicking.

Agentic AI – who is the agent?

Well… today it felt like I was the agent.  The AI knew everything and just needed a button-pushing monkey (me) to make it actually happen in the real world.  Rate of progress with these things, I expect shortly to be able to task the AI “make my cookies GDPR compliant” and hand it over a couple of passwords and hey-presto job done.

I for one welcome our robot overlords…

shout out to Will Whitten

Planting Saggitaria subulata

Posted on by Andy Pierce

It is a struggle to find plants that can thrive in the Shrimphaus.  The combination of low-KH high-GH “low tech” not-CO2 injected water seems to make things difficult.  I recently gave up on the reputedly “easy” Staurogyne Repens.  Still, lots of plants left to try.  This time we’re having a go with another “easy” plant:  Sagittaria subulata, otherwise known as “Dwarf sag”.

Sourced from Dennerle, I picked up a healthy-looking in vitro pot and installed it liberally around the Shrimphaus.  The plantlets came apart easily and there were beaucoup number of them.  Dennerle knows their stuff!

Dwarf sag first 100 days

We’re now 100 days in and the Dwarf sag seems to be doing ok.  It is growing although not all the plantlets thrived.  It’s an open question as to the balance between plant growth and algae growth but seems ok for now – if you look behind it in the ‘newly planted (left of tank)’ picture you can see the struggle the S. repens was having.  Reputed to be able to grow out of control and take over a tank, I haven’t seen much evidence of that in the Shrimphaus.  I’d be happy with just “grows modestly and looks ok”.  Low tech is slow tech so it’s important to have patience in this aspect of the hobby.  I haven’t noticed the shrimp pay much attention one way or another (which is good).

New neocardina ‘Blue Velvet’ baby shrimp

Posted on by Andy Pierce

I thought the Blue Velvet neocaridina shrimp had all died off, but then suddenly, babies!  There are at least 5 new little guys in the Shrimphaus.  I have no idea where they came from – there is no sign of their parents.  I gave them some protein flakes and they seem to be enjoying those.  I can only guess there are numbers hiding out in the big pile of rocks somewhere.  The water alkalinity is around 30 ppm CaCO3 equivalents, or a little over 1.5 dKH.  Mostly I am trying to keep the alkalinity down to support the caridina shrimp, but seems good for neocaridinas too. 

The plant weight is holding down some new Tropica Monosolenium tenerum I picked up from Aqua Essentials.  Too early to tell how that is doing yet since it got planted only two weeks ago.  The tenerum is a liverwort, similar to but much larger than the Riccardia growing emersed on the river.

I think the little green sprouts around the protein flakes are submersed form Lilaeopsis Novae-zelandiae which got planted on 22-Feb. but I’m not completely certain about that.  The only other contender would be ‘dwarf sag’ – Sagittaria subulata but pretty sure these spouts came up before the Saggitaria got planted (15-May).

Big aquatic plant trim-back

Posted on by Andy Pierce

The Fireplace Aquarium was looking pretty overgrown and I hadn’t done a water change in a couple of weeks so time to get stuck in for some maintenance.  For me, once I get going on this kind of thing it tends to get a little more vigorous than first anticipated, but it has a way of working out.

Stem plants can grow fast and if they get to the surface they can block a lot of light.  Being exposed to open air can also change leaf characteristics back towards emersed form growth.  You can potentially get a lot of adventitious root formation as well with plants looking to grab on to the surface surroundings.

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Red stems for Shrimphaus

Posted on by Andy Pierce

I recently put some Rotala rotundifolia ‘Blood Red’ into the Fireplace Aquarium and it came in more of a burnt ochre shade of dusky reddish orange than ‘blood red’ as such.  I looked around for the (potentially mythic) ‘Singapore’ (SG) variant of the Rotala which is claimed to be more red under a broader set of conditions.  The SG variant was pretty hard to source but RareAquaPlants on Ebay had some listed, so I picked it up.  A big advantage of smaller Ebay vendors vs. most commercial sources is that aquatic plants from commercial houses tend to be brought in direct from big professional nursery growers like Tropica or Dennerle.  These growers almost without exception supply plants grown emersed (“ebb and flow” hydroponics) rather than submersed, so these plants require a period of adaptation to transition to their new underwater environment.  Ebay vendors are more likely to be selling extra trimmings grown submersed in an aquarium, so already fully adapted to the underwater environment.  These stems arrived in great condition and there were even some bonus red stems thrown in for free – I thought these might be Ludwigia palustris ‘mini Super Red’ (which the vendor subsequently confirmed).

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Planting Rotala rotundifolia ‘Blood Red’

Posted on by Andy Pierce

Having some red in the Fireplace Aquarium gives some nice contrasting colours.  I picked up some AquaFleur Rotala rotundifolio ‘Blood red’ to see how that would do.

Red aquarium plants

There are lots of good choices to provide some red colour in a planted aquarium.  I had very good success previously with Ludwigia palustris mini ‘Super Red’ which grew as an intense dark red but is a fast-growing stem plant that requires a lot of trimming.  Another classic choice are various Alternanthera varieties.  I have tried many including Alternanthera reineckii ‘Rot’, Alternanthera reineckii ‘Mini’, Alternanthera reineckii ‘Rosanervig’ and most lately Alternanthera cardinalis variegata.  Unfortunately, amano shrimp think Alternanthera species are delicious, which is problematic for these plants.  I also had a go with Cryptocoryne wendtii ‘flamingo’ which is supposed to be spectacular, but for me was pretty much just dark green.  Cryptocoryne petchii ‘Pink’ also didn’t really pink up at all in my setup.

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Baby blue shrimp

Posted on by Andy Pierce

Here is a new baby Blue Velvet neocaridina shrimp in the shrimphaus.  A berried Tangerine Tiger caridina shrimp does its thing on the left side with a pure red line caridina watching on.  The zoom out at the end shows the scale.

I thought the Blue Velvets were not doing well, but there are at least two medium sized one and this new baby.  I’m not sure where the parents are hiding out… seems they’re doing ok.

Lighting and diatoms

Posted on by Andy Pierce

The Shrimphaus gets some light brown coloured algae-like material growing on the glass which needs periodic scraping off.  It won’t just rub off casually, but it comes off using a credit card blank relatively easily.  It does seem to happen more in regions of higher lighting.  It isn’t super unsightly, and doesn’t happen fast enough to be really bothersome, but still.  I suspected diatoms (because of the brownish colour) which are pretty common in new aquaria.  Reputedly diatoms are a “problem” that pretty much solve themselves over time, but seems not the case for the quite well-established Shrimphaus – these happened in the previous iteration of the Shrimphaus as well.

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Shrimphaus new residents

Posted on by Andy Pierce

I wanted to get some different colour shrimp to help liven up the Shrimphaus but it’s not good to mix different colour morphs of the same species as the offspring will eventually wind up as wild-type colouration.  Shrimphaus already has two different morphs of Caridina cantonensis shrimp:  pure red line (PRL) and more generic crystal red shrimp.  Maybe it wasn’t a great idea to have both of these, but there you go.  They are doing well and breeding successfully.  Shrimphaus also has a handful of Neocaridina davidi ‘Bloody Mary’.  The bloody marys first arrived 3 years ago and I think had one generation of offspring so those left (which have been through a lot if I’m honest) are pretty long in the tooth and I wouldn’t think be able to still breed.

So, let’s get them some new friends…

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