New Tank

Sadly my first fish tank looks to have lasted only about four months.

The good news is that everyone took the move over to the new tank just fine.

Things got started on Friday when I moved the tank into the house. The top of the stand itself wasn't perfectly level so I bought some foam to set underneath it. I couldn't help myself and I had to put at least a little water in it.

On Saturday I washed sand. Since water and dirt were intimately involved Charles had to get in on that action.
In goes the slop.

I was actually a bit surprised when a single bag of sand was enough to fill the bottom up but I didn't fight it, washing sand is an absolute pain. Once the sand was in I went ahead and filled it up. I used the tap in the sink to do it. I'd seen too many lizards in the front yard hose to really trust it. 48 Gallons 2.5 gallons at a time. Ugh.

On Monday things started to move. I went ahead and started to pull out about half the decorations and give them a bleach dunk. I didn't want any of that brown algae making the trip over if I could help it. Tuesday I put in the decorations I'd cleaned on Monday and then emptied out the rest of the decorations from the 55 gallon. I moved the heater over to the 48 gallon and then started netting fish. Lemme tell you, trying to net an inch and a half fish out of a four foot tank is no easy task. I actually felt a bit bad about all the stress they were getting but it couldn't be helped. Eventually everyone got moved in and the rest of the decor got a dunking. Finally on Wednesday I put in the last of the decorations and everything was in.

The end result:


I'm very pleased with the way it looks, even more than I thought I would. It was a real pain to aquascape though, lots of depth but not width, sort of the exact opposite of what I had before. I think I need a few taller plants, maybe another one that attaches to the wall but overall it's looking very nice. One thing I didn't expect to like was the anemic light. As you can see the tank is rather dim, it's got all of 15 watts of lighting right now. The darkness makes the aquarium look pretty sharp, especially as part of the living room's decor.