There are those times where you should be smart enough to just do something right the first go round, then there are those times where you are just so exuberant that you don't realize you did something wrong until it's a real pain to fix the problem. We did the latter instead of the former through blind ignorance and then really didn't want to rectify our little oops. Though if you could have sidestepped moving a very full and very heavy aquarium you would too...trust me. It isn't laziness, it's called avoidance and unfortunately avoidance rarely works out well. At some point you have to fix things and then you get really annoyed because you should have fixed it right out of the gate but dangit you were too busy doing other things. That's my story and I am sticking to it.
Our little oops was that we set the aquarium up too close to the wall which made it impossible for us to fit the overflow box behind the tank, let alone run the tubing down into the sump. Instead of siphoning the water out of the aquarium and moving the tank forward a few inches while it was still on the stand we avoided the issue. We avoided the issue despite the fact that the tank not being set up properly pissed me off daily because I couldn't place the hood over the top of the aquarium. I can't handle things being out of order but we were steadfast and stubborn. Anything to avoid moving that thing. Today we made our weekend voyage to Southwest Saltwater to pick up our cleanup crew because our Christmas gift of algae was getting (just a tad) out of hand.
Three great minds came together on a way to fashion a new overflow box that would fit behind the tank and possibly be even better than the one we had now. Three infinitely wise individuals pooled their sagacity and then decided: we had to move the tank. Thank goodness for our live fish store, they were kind enough to lend us two fifty gallon buckets to drain our water since we didn't need to do a large change at this point. It's very nice with all of the miserly behavior in the world that there are those people who will go out of their way to help others. Obviously we will return the fifty gallon buckets since we really have no use for them (إن شاءالله) but I don't know what we would have done without them.
Proudly we acquired several snails, some hermit crabs, and I was promised an eel tomorrow by Frank who caved to the crazy woman (me) cooing over the tank sweet words of affection. There was also a scraper received which is great because I needed to clean the back of the tank where algae had begun to creep along the sparkling glass.
We also made our weekly trip to Lowe's and confused the gentleman in the plumbing section who forgot us from last week as those, "Weird fish people". Our goal is to find a way to further soften the noise from the overflow pouring into the sump and the skimmer returning water to the sump so that it can go back up into the tank. It is also incredibly important to get a GFI outlet installed. Something happened last week (water + electricity = oops!) and the outlet behind the tank isn't working particularly well, and by particularly I mean if you move the surge protector even the tiniest bit the entire thing shuts off. So after picking up some tubing, a new GFI outlet, and a bottle of champagne for New Years we went home to move the aquarium. I let Frank handle that. I cleaned up the extra twenty pounds of sand that we had purchased last week and added it to the tank so that we have an even amount of coverage throughout the aquarium.
We haven't changed the outlet yet, but we really need to considering the second the tank was moved away from the wall enough for a cat to sneak in behind it we had power coming and going in very distressing cycles. It was disrupting the orgy of snails which is the best thing I can think of to call it. Snail orgy, wrap your mind around that. Five snails who instead of feasting on the delicious algae that we had so carefully cultivated decided to suction all over each other and refused to be parted even with prodding by both of their new parents. Absolutely disgusting when you think about it.
At the moment we have a stack of boxes set up against both sides of the tank to keep los gatos away from delicate electronics that are keeping our tank running full speed. We also have the hood on the tank which is just fantastic and the snails having finished their orgy are now chewing happily. Tomorrow we are going to pick some corals to go in the tank and my eel. My precious and beautiful snowflake eel will be coming home to stay. I wonder what I shall name it.
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