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After about a year of casual requests, my local aquarium have finally located some Tropheus sp red Katete otherwise known as Tropheus Moliro spec. red or Tropheus Moliro for me. A pic of this breed can be found here.

They will arrive later this week which means I will need to re-stock my currnet tank; take my 12 existing various African Cichlid fish back to the local aquarium for credits, and pick up my little new dudes I unfortunately need to do this as the existing fish in my tank will not survive with the agressive nature of the new Tropheus species.

Due to this species requiring higher pH levels I need to make use of some coral sand which has the added benefit maintaining an increased pH level as well as reflecting the tank lighting and enhancing the colours of the Tropheus Moliro. This means I need to tear down the tank remove the current substrate and replace it with the coral sand. I then need to spend a few days performing an escalated nitrification process which of course will already be assisted with the biologocal matter in my 1600L/h cannister pump filter media but will also be helped with an additional shot of aerobic bacteria.

Really looking forward to the new species, they should be rather entertaining. Those of you who know of these fish will definately understand.

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I just got back from spending a couple of days up in the Hunter Valley, NSW Australia and it was awesome

Initially I had singled out only a small number of wineries to visit, but we happened to visit a lot more than intended (with wines bought from all bar one) so as expected I’m completely stuffed after getting back.

The wineries I visited, in order, were:

Tamberlaine
Brokenwood
McGuigan
Tyrrells
Oakvale
Lindemans
Rosemount Estate
McWilliams Mount Pleasant
Bimbadgen Estate
Calais Estate

We stayed at the Hermitage Lodge in Pokolbin and had dinner at the Il Cacciatore restaurant. I can say without a doubt that the restaurant was probably the best that I have ever been to. I had the Sautéed garlic chilli prawns and the roasted lamb rump on white truffle oil mash and pesto garnished with sundried tomatoes. If there’s anything I love the most, it would be fresh basil pesto and lamb.. The dish was absolutely awesome!

Along with my dinner I had a bottle of Bimbadgen’s 2004 Art Series Sangiovese and it as well was the best wine I have tasted to date. It went perfectly with my dishes. Needless to say the next day Bimbadgen Estate was our first visit (which was planned anyway) of which I promptly picked up a case of the abovementioned Sangiovese. This was great considering that they had removed it from tastings and display at the cellar door. The wine apparently is only being sold to restaurants due to the limited nature of the release.

Back at the Hermitage, we stayed in their deluxe rooms which were really quite nice, overlooking the vineyards. It was a very pleasant stay.

I have already tagged a few wineries that I intend on visiting next time I’m up in the Hunter Valley. A lot of which were the smaller and lesser known ones which caught my eye while I was doing my rounds between the ones that we did visit. I can imagine that quite a few of those smaller wineries will offer some significantly tasty wines. I think though that after visiting 10 in the 2 days (8 on the first day, 2 on the second), that this is going to be a rather expensive experience. As mentioned earlier, wine was purchased from each of those wineries bar one. That one that I didn’t get anything from was McGuigan. I don’t know what it is, but there’s just something about their wines that I really just don’t like. That and they have the general ‘trashy’ feel to em.. Call it personal opinion if you will but I really just didn’t like them.

In the mean time I’ve had to re-organise my wine rack, and I certainly think I would utilize either another rack or more importantly one of those humidity and climate controlled wine fridges. A suitable addition for the computer room maybe? Either way, I’ll have to fight it out with Sara for approval on that one. She complains I have too many gadgets and electrical ‘things’ .. I personally think she’s over-reacting.. our power bill is around 3-4 times that of friends, but I won’t get into that now ~

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Yes, as you can no doubt see I am screwing around with the site again. I’m on some annual leave from work and this is the best time for me to stuff with things

If you are after the howto documents, rest assured they will be back within the next few days. Try google’s cache if you *really* need them..

For those of you who use the rss feeds, you’ll note that the url’s have changed slightly. The Atom feed is here, rss2.0 is here and rss .92 is here…

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