On my way to create a Self Sustainable (Sufficient) Aquarium

An aquarium is a good hobby. But if you want to keep it for long then you need to find an easy way to clean it. I thought of building a fish tank. But knew that the cleaning of the fish tank is ultimately going to be the problem.. So as it was with any other case, I researched to find out the possibility of making my aquarium a self-sustainable one.

As you know there are three type of living agents in a fish tank
1. Consumers (fish),
2. Producers (plants),
3. Composers (shrimps, snails).

If you know how to balance the three in the tank, you got it self-sustainable. On my way..

* I talk to few local experts in the respective fields but all said it is not possible
* Some have done research, and saw them on the internet
* Back yard Aquaponic looks great
* Walstad method is excellent too

So it seems the path ahead is not totally dry..


After much research I started to build it. The end result was a giant tank holding roughly about 3000 liters of fresh water.. The tank was purely built using cement, sand and something called cement brick (native to Sri Lanka I guess). I had three 3 x 2 ft 8mm thick glasses. Later I thought whether I would have added one more glass of same size to improve the inside visibility. But then again less glass mean less sunlight which turn to less algae in the long run. Anyway it is too late to change it now..

The tank was prepared for fish (In theory the new cement layer produce many toxic and also high PH level) by putting water, coconut husk and letting the two stay there for about a week. In a very short period you will see algae grow and then the mosquitos started to breed. In native term, this indicates that the tank is just ready for fish now. The tanks was further prepared ..

• ½ cubic meters of fresh soil – I used fresh soil as that has less iron, and other chemicals. That also can hold fish waist lot longer than soil taken from the surface. This way plant can grow to consume nitrate of water and soil later.
• ¼ cubic meters of large rocks – This adds variety to the tank and also helps to control the temperature inside the tank.
• Aquatic plant, one wheel borrows – They are the oxygen producer and also the nitrate consumer. They help to control the temperature inside the tank. Most of these collected from the paddy field at the end of our land. There are many emergent plants around this area but not many submerged plants. Emergent plants with their aerial advantage can oxygenate the tank bed much faster than submerged plant which depends on the co2 of the water. This area is rich with many varieties of ferns.
• 10 different varieties of submerged plants – I bought many varieties of submerged plants from the local aquarium shops. You need to buy many varieties of submerged plants as you don’t know which can survive under you tank condition. Obviously some of these plants will dies while some other will find their way to establish in this new setup.

Being in an Island I can easily find sea sand.. so I added few basket of sea sand to cover the whole tank bed. This made a 1 inch thicker sand layer on top of the fresh soil.

Then water is introduced to the tank. On my way, I noticed these…

• Mud color in the water
• Sea sand had some chemicals that dissolve in the water and they added a greenly color to the water. From the time I saw that I knew it came to last long. Sea sand is a bad choice, specially the one you can find in hardware shops these days.

I used to live in a village of Sri Lanka and in such places every home has a dug well (dug well water has limited oxygen so that you cannot add fish to this water immediately after you completed adding). The tank is filled with water, mud, and with the dusty color made by Sea sand. About two days later the mud settle down but not the green color added by the sea sand.

So it is time to introduce few fish to the tank. The water channel has enough fish in it. I pick few variety of
1. Dandies (Striped rasbora),
2. Local variety of Fighter Fish (Betta),
3. Two small loola fish (variety of Murrel). I hope to control the fish population with these two,
4. One mada kanaya (Spotted snakehead). It jumps out of the tank twice and then after putting back survived only a day as it does not to have its habitat. The fish needs an ultra-soft mud layer to hide him so died in my fresh soil tank bed.
5. 4 tilapias,
6. few dozens of Weligouva (Bar eyed goby) and
7. Small shrimps to clean the tank bed. But I never saw the shrimp lately saw I wonder whether the fish ate them later. I know some fish eat shrimps.

I went about another 4-5 days. The fish were looking healthy but I never feed them and the water get little clearer now, but still not clear enough to see the fish if they are not close to the glass. I knew that the plants also take time to establish themselves in this new setup. Until that time I have to bear with the bad coloring of the water.

A week pass by, the water got slightly better, mud went away but the dissolved coloring continue to stay.. Some plants gradually started to pick up while some ferns died away. I had a 76 fish in the tank and it was too little for the size of this tank. I decided to add more
1. 40 neon tetras,
2. 20 small white angels,
3. 8 two dotted gouramies,
4. 8 medium size silver sharks (wonder whether it was one of my bad selections),
5. 8 gold barb, and
6. 4 other small fish that their name I didn't remember..

The total added up to 175 fish in the tank now..

About two weeks later, I suddenly noticed that algae is starting to pick up.. It is so evident that algae going to beat the plants. A biological fight has to start now. The plants are still at their very primitive stage, so I cannot wait till they grow enough to absorb nitrate to reduce algae.

The fish pollute water and add ammonia to it. Then the bacteria in the bed of the tank convert it to nitrate which is what encourage the algae growth. As the tank is getting outside sun light during the whole day, I needed to act fast.. I throw few of my trump cards…

1. Covered the top part of the tank with water lettuce (Local variety) to reduce the sun light while introducing a confident nitrate consumer. These are so aggressive that they can beat algae by consuming more nitrate while hurting algae by the way of reducing sun light.
2. Introduced Kang Kung (Water Spinach) that is another aggressive submerged plant and also a vegetable. Kang Kung is so aggressive that start to grow rapidly in days. Now the top part is fully covered and you hardly can see the inside. This is with the mud added with the water lettuce and also the dissolved colored chemicals added with the sea sand.
3. 5 W pump to filter the water – This is a(for Sri Lankans, this consumes 3-5 unit of your electricity and have virtually no impact of the monthly bill) small water pump (600 L/H and I bought it for about 1300/= (~ 13/ $) Sri Lankan rupees) with a homemade sponge filter. I had to clean this every day. I know that once the plants are established I can remove the filter..

The tank start to show some results now. It gets clearer every day.. the coloring added with the sea sand also start to pass away slowly.

Now the half completed tank looks like this.........





Today when I check the water is much clearer and I can see the wall of the tank which is about 4 ft away from the glass.. I will post few more photos later

President Mahinda Rajapaksa’s Death Win??

President Mahinda would have won this presidential election quite easily, if not for his bad election campaign. At the time when he announced the election, President Mahinda was the more popular candidate. His bad election campaign drags him down to an end where it has suddenly become a close fight. As they talk more, as they work more, the lost of votes become the heigher. But no matter what, at the end MR will surely win and be the next president of this country, but the million dollar question is the percentage of the lead that he would acquire.

In the same time, a win for MR would reduce the much expected post election violence.

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If it is a close win. That would create doubts among people, making the upcoming parliament election an even closer fight. That can increases the uncertainty, forcing a signification portion of floating voters to vote for UNP at the next election. A close win would also give ever needed confident to a significant portion of frustrated government MPs to swap their side. If a win for SF could put the country in an anarchy state, a same could expect from a close win. A close win can paralyze the government, badly effecting the growth of the country. MR is a good leader and he take right decisions the right time (good or bad), but if the win in the presidential election is a close one, then the paralyzed enemies will gain energy to rise against him openly. That, in one way can press the morals of his proud family members to the wall.

If MR can manage to get a 60% win over the main opponent in the presidential election that can very well guarantee an easy win for him in the upcoming parliament election.

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After the win, it is going to be challenging for MR to not to take the path, which CBK took in her second term. She single handedly managed to create a barbaric queen out of her. That deposits energy in the people of this country to chase after her after her term ends. She ran out of the country like a traitor (She is truly a sex addict traitor). Who ever brought her to power in 1994 did a historic mistake. So where we are with MR, is he going to do the same..? I can categorically note that he is very precisely aligned to frustrate the people who will vote for him.

This will be MR’s last win and that will be the last win for UPFA too. In another term it will be their death win. MR can bring forward one of his brother (Basil, Probably) as the next presidential candidate, but only to create strong objections from his own party. That will break the party in to several pieces. In the same way bringing up one like Maithreepala Sirisena would also be an efficacious remedy to lost the election. He is the next logical selection for the post. But he is not a popular character among people. I don't think that he ever had a vision like it was with MR. It can be some one from UNP or the candidate may not be even from UNP, but whoever it is, the bottom line is that it is going to be someone from another party (not UPFA) who is going to govern this nation after MR. That day if MR and his family does not want the people of his country to chase after them forgetting everything they did in the past, just like they did to CBK, he has to perform miracles, arrays of miracles just like he did by winning this war against terror. We will just be observers, they are the actors of this scene..

In my view point after they complete MR terms, UPFA will definitely lose the power. That will bring the much waited election violence into the stage too. That day, many politicians (including Mervin Silva), few media personals, army officers, artists will have to pay for the life they earned by doing what they do today. So it is going to be an interesting future ahead.. Election violence, corruption, and political jokes, political dramas (likes of what Wimal Weerawamse is doing) will be of their peaks. This will burry many into the sand valley of the nature as traitors, theifs, loons etc .. If one can remain as a Hero.. I sincerely hope that it would be MR. He has to be the Hero of this era..

The pen (to write the history) is with MR and he will be writing the history for him after the win over this election..

Later... In 20 years time from now....., the time will tell whether he really is the hero of this era or not..

Anarkali Akarsha to Southern Provincial Council

Anarkali Akarsha, to contest for Southern Provincial Council elections representing the Galle District under the UPFA ticket, confirms Susil Premajayantha General Secretary UPFA..

In this regards, She has received the nod from the President himself to contest for the Bentara-Elpitiya polling division at the upcoming Council polls.

Anarkalli Akarsha was Mr. Samaraweera´s Coordinating Secretary during his days as Minister in the UPFA government. However there are other sources that says that she was appointed to that post directly by the president himself..

This celebrated actress was to marry young politician Duminda Silva once, but after he abducting her in several occasions due to some personal matters, later said that if this is how politicians in our country conduct themselves, she would rather be a free ordinary citizen than the wife of a gun-wielding politician.



However, this is going to be interesting, let's wait and see how the people of South respond to this move by the Government....

The West is taking up East on SL HR matters

The United Nations Human Rights Council clashed Tuesday over two competing resolutions on how to provide aid to thousands of people displaced by the Sri Lankan military campaign against the Tamil Tigers.

The first resolution, tabled by Switzerland and supported by European countries, proposed that international aid agencies be given direct access to those affected by the long-running war, including more than 300,000 people housed in government camps. It also calls for investigations into possible war crimes during the conflict against the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). A counterresolution, tabled by Sri Lanka and backed by powerful allies including China, Russia, and India, calls for the UN to cooperate with the Sri Lankan government in providing humanitarian assistance.

During the session, Sri Lanka clashed with Western countries as it attempts to curtail investigations into allegations of war crimes, reports The Times of London.

Tuesday's special session on Sri Lanka was requested by 17 nations, including France, Germany, Britain, and Canada. A Human Rights Commission special session has been convened on only 10 previous occasions.

Observers at yesterday's preliminary meeting in Geneva, which was described as acrimonious, said that the 47-member Council was divided over the European resolution, with 18 countries for and 18 against. The other nine are undecided….

The two competing agendas clashed in the preliminary meeting when an Asian bloc led by India, Pakistan and Malaysia argued for today's special session to be abandoned altogether. India, China and Egypt walked out of the meeting after this was refused.

Sri Lanka went to the meeting backed by powerful new allies such as China, which provided much of the military hardware for the final offensive that defeated the Tamil Tigers last week after a 25-year war….

Several undecided countries, including Chile and Mexico, are pressing for a compromise resolution incorporating elements of both drafts.

International human rights groups are dissatisfied with the European resolution because it fails to call for an international war crimes inquiry and instead suggests that Sri Lanka launch internal investigations, reports Agence France-Presse.

Although the European-led text targeted violations during the conflict and backed investigations, the watchdog group UN Watch dismissed it as "a joke".

"Despite the call by UN rights officials for an international inquiry into possible war crimes, the proposal instead asks Sri Lanka to investigate itself -- it's a joke," said UN Watch's executive director Hillel Neuer….

Advocacy group Human Rights Watch said that the Council needed to examine the creation of an impartial commission of inquiry to investigate allegations of human rights violations committed by both parties as a matter of urgency.

But the Sri Lankan government denies such reports and insists it is in favor of a national reconciliation campaign. On the eve of the Human Rights Commission session, a Sri Lankan government official said international monitoring was unacceptable, reports The Nation, a Sri Lankan daily news paper.

The international community is welcome to provide Sri Lanka with assistance, but it should be according to the wishes of the people of this country, including the people of the North, Senior Presidential Advisor and MP Basil Rakapaksa said in a message to the international community.

"If they want to be our friends, then they should be genuine friends. We do not want 'monitors,' we need partners. Be our partners in this task to help our people," Rajapaksa said.

An opinion piece in an Indian newspaper, the Deccan Herald, argues that the Human Rights Commission's disagreement on how to tackle Sri Lanka is evidence of a global power play underway in the Indian Ocean.

In essence, Sri Lanka is the theatre where Russia and China are frontally challenging the US's incremental global strategy to establish NATO presence in the Indian Ocean region. The US has succeeded in bringing the NATO up to the Persian Gulf region. The NATO is swiftly expanding its relationship with Pakistan. But it is Sri Lanka that will be the jewel in the NATO's Indian Ocean crown. Russia and China (and Iran) are determined to frustrate the US geo-strategy. The hard reality, therefore, is that geopolitics is sidetracking Sri Lanka's Tamil problem.

Meanwhile, the Sri Lankan government last Tuesday rejected the Tamil Tigers' offer to participate in the country's democratic process after being defeated last week, reports the BBC.

In an interview with the BBC, [Sri Lankan defense secretary] Gotabhaya Rajapaksa said the LTTE rebels could not be trusted to give up "terrorism"....

He said: "I do not believe the LTTE can enter a democratic process after years of their violent activities." He added that there were "enough democratic Tamil political parties in the country" to represent the Tamil minority....

Mr Rajapaksa also said the work of government forces was not yet over as they had to recover weapons hidden by the LTTE in the northern and eastern regions.

Read More....

Prabakaran is not dead???

One more attempt, huh!!.. I received this image via an email, I am not sure who this is,,, but he wanted us to think that Piraba is still alive...

We had enough of these and thank for the effort, but let this be the final of these....



TamilNet is good at this. As a result of the war I know that they have become photo shop (an image editing tool) experts.

However as usual, a simple test revealed it all..


If you have any doubts, here is the original photo.. [Thank goes to "anonymous blogger" :-)]


Still not sure... then have a look at this.. :-)

LTTE leader Prabhakaran killed - Reports

As per the colombo Page - The LTTE leader Velupillai Prabhakaran was shot dead on Monday while trying to flee in an ambulance, news reports said.

Citing a senior defence official news agencies said Prabhakaran was trying to drive out of the battle zone in a an ambulance along with a few aides.

"He was killed with two others inside the vehicle. There will be a formal announcement later," the official was quoted. According to the source the vehicle has caught fire upon firing by the troops.

According to the military, the Tigers tried to evacuate its leaders early this morning in two vehicles. Army special soldiers of 53 Division have intercepted the vehicles moving north and destroyed the convoy after fierce fighting.

The military said it had found 150 bodies of LTTE cadres so far and they are in the process of identifying them.

Among the identified were, Charles Anthony, the eldest son of LTTE chief, B. Nadesan, LTTE's political head, S. Pulidevan , LTTE's head of peace secretariat, S. Ramesh, A special military leader, Kapil Amman, LTTE's deputy intelligence leader, Sudarman , the aide to Prabhakarn's son, Rathnam Master , a Black Tiger leader and Ilango, another senior LTTE leader.