3 years in, not a single water change. I still have rice fish in the pond on the rooftop!

Satin Champagne. actually.

And Nick and Mason brought me back a BNR32 from their China trip (that’s the 2nd I’ve gotten in a week as Khoa gifted me a Kyosho one last week!).

Hobby Zen Life x LB.

Calsonic! The inspiration behind my own R32 build.

Cardo’s GT-R.

Lambo Killer.

And Paul gifted me my 3rd BNR32 in the space of 2 weeks! What’s going on?!

Paul’s Vette.

DJ Stella X Puppy.

Untamed.

Dave, an old musician mate of mine just happened to be in traffic outside, saw the ZEN sign, and Cardo’s GT-R (thinking it was mine) and he though he’d drop in!

Nick, Mason and one very clean DC2R.

The Hobby Zen Life track.

We rallied whoever was left over for a group shot. Great vibes, great people!

Such a rad ZEN EOMM today. Super chill and very reminiscent of the ZEN Saturdaze we used to host at 12-4PM every Saturday at our old Leichhardt store.

What an awesome day (that ended at 2AM for me lol). So many faces I’ve not seen in 10+ years.

Thanks to all that came along. Seeing you guys wearing ZEN again blows my mind! Special thanks to Reggie for feeding us and Gi for running the ZEN shop.

I brought my camera, but as usual I failed to get any shots as I was talking too much!

Watsoniana pushing out a new leaf.

The Watsoniana was the star of my cabinet, but it’s outgrown the cabinet so I had to move it out. I was really worried it wouldn’t do well outside of the cabinet but it’s now pushing out a new leaf and it’s going to be a massive one as the stem is super thick in comparison to the other 2 existing leaves.

Got to love a hand written note!

I put in a planty order with an online shop called We Know Gardens last week. I expected a very small bunch of leaves, but instead I got a whole bunch of massive plants! These guys are legit. The plants were packed so well and came in a massive (and heavy) box. 100% I’ve bought too many plants!

Plants:
Native Starter Pack (Knobbly Club Rush, Shield Pennywort, Brahmi, Running Marsh Flower, Hairy Nardoo)
White Water lily (Nymphaea)
Golden Sweet Flag (Acorus Gramineus)
Water Hyssop (Bacopa Caroliniana)

Today I took delivery of my rice fish from Abquatics. All of them made it, and settled in SO well, they look like they’re starving as they’re picking at small leaves thinking it’s food! I got some plants too from Abquatics, some of them floating, but some not (so I’ll have to sort out some sort of potting for them). The fish are amazing, the plants not so much (quite unhealthy and ratty to be honest). Overall happy though! More pond plants are on the way from another online shop!

More plants from More Plants in Rosebery who are having a 15% off all plants sale atm to celebrate their 5th b’day. Support local!

Early settlers.

I dropped in to Aquaristic today (I now live next door to one of the best small aquarium shops in Sydney) to buy some dechlorinator. Not so surprisingly (as Aquaristic tend to sell some really special things) they had one single red rice fish! I passed on the fish for now but I did pick up 2 banana leaves (free-floating, no stems, the roots sprout out from directly under the leaf itself). They only had a few and these were the only 2 in decent condition (they were the biggest ones too). The guy who looked after me said they will flower if they get full sun.

In love with my Watermelon Peperomia. Not only because the leaves look like watermelons, but they sparkle in the sun!

I often think about setting up another aquarium, but then I think about the maintenance (cleaning algae off the glass daily and weekly water changes) and all the livestock I’ve killed over the years. These thoughts have usually been enough to keep my want for another aquarium at bay, but I’m super into growing plants right now and I’ve spent some time looking into terrariums, which then led to looking at paludariums as well as ponds.

Since I’m starting to work on setting up my rooftop I started looking into ponds a little more. Whilst I’m still put off by having to do weekly water changes I stumbled upon Japanese Rice Fish (Medaka) and how many Japanese keep them outdoors in small ceramic pots without filters or heaters all year round (with no water changes!).

The more research I did the more I’ve found that these little fish are perhaps the hardiest fish out there (and I think they’re beautiful!). They’re found in rice fields, and have been kept by the Japanese since the 17th century. They can tolerate temperatures form as low as 3 °C to as high as 42 °C (nuts!) and pH levels from 6.5 through to 8.0 (basically they can live in fresh or salt water, again… nuts!).

A low-tech pond sounds like a really fun project so I dropped in to Bunnings this morning and picked up a huge plant pot and some epoxy to fill up the drainage hole. I’ve made an online order for some pond plants and some rice fish too. I’m excited!