Monday, November 8, 2010

Tales from the Tank #1

A couple Friday's ago, after arranging to buy the 40 gallon fish tank, we head over to the J's house and grill some burgers and check out the new 75 gallon tank. It is absolutely HUGE.

After a bit, we get the tank and stuff loaded up and bring it home. Thank goodness Matt was home that weekend because I am a wimp so he had to help unload it from the truck. We were so excited....we now had a HOBBY!! Whoo Hoo!

So we got up early on Saturday and headed out to "other" pet store on the far side of town. We walked in and immediately feel as though we have entered the twilight zone of fish tanks. (insert twilight zone music here). There seriously must have been 150 fish tanks - filled with all kinds of fish from tiny neon tetra's to the terrible maneaters...piranha!!

So as we walked around in a daze - not really knowing where to start, this great young gal steps up and asks "May I help you".  (She didn't realize how much help we really needed).  So, after a few explanations of what the color coded zeros on the tanks were, the things we needed to do, she promptly handed us the "New Tank Syndrome" flyer and sent us on our way.

Now, "New Tank Syndrome" is much different than "Empty Nest Syndrome".  NTS is pretty much an explanation of how you need to get the water just so, before you start adding a bunch of fish (cheap or expensive).  If the PH and bacteria levels are not just so....any fish you add will die. (Great - Just Great - I have already experienced fish death with the snails...so of course, I said to Terry, "NO WAY am I going to go through that again with an eight dollar angel fish". So we decided to follow the advice of the NTS handout and slow down. 

So, being the cost concious DIY people that we are - and now that we were gonna "take our time". We decided that if this was truly going to be a hobby...we would make some of the pretty rock formations ourselves.  You can already see where this is headed right?

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