Hi all,

I have been rather absent lately, due to the birth of my son and a lot of
work at work. I thought I'd drop in and show off my newest project.

I had 5 aquariums as of last week- one had a newt, a few frogs, a betta,
and a white cloud minnow. One had a pack of spiny eels, a caecilian worm,
two butterflyfish, and a raphael cat. One had congo tetras, bumblebee
gobies, and misc oddballs. Another had featherfin rainbows, sparkiling
gouramis, and african glass cats.

Anyway, the ffth tank was the 55 gallon. For the last 2 years or so it has
been home to a pair of polypterus delhezi (cool fish, but large spiny and
ornery- and hell on plants). I made the tough decision to put them on
consignment at a LFS that specializes in "Asian businessman fish" in my
words- Arowana, polypterids, bettas, discus, and the like. So now I had an
empty 55 gallon and a desire to be down to 2 aquariums.

I stripped the tank down, cleaned everything solid (I admit I neglected the
tank, as it has been empty for 2+ weeks... and I forgot to turn the light
timer off too :-/) and put in substrate (Fluorite, gravel, and profile
mixed- straight fluorite is too dense for my spiny eels, who like to
burrow). I cannibalized a lot of the plants from the 3 tanks I was
decomissioning, along with a lot of the driftwood. Then I got to work.

I planted the tank, filled it(god bless Python), and started shuffling fish
around. First off were the congo tetras. They went into the 55. Then came
the glass cats, also for the 55. After that I took the sparkling gouramis
and the featherfin rainbows and put them in the tank the congos were in (as
this is the other tank I am keeping- a 20g long). I took all the fish from
the eel tank and tossed them in the 55, along with the frogs. The white
cloud and betta went in with the sparkling gouramis, etc.

And voila, I was down to two tanks.

Some pictures of the newly planted tank are available at:

http://www.emptiedout.com/img/view_a...umName=album15

I think it will grow in nicely from here- I still need to snip some vals
from my tank at work, and some pygmy chain swords from the other surtviving
tank, but I was tired.

Also if you look at
http://www.emptiedout.com/img/view_p...bum15&id=DSC00
950 in the background you can see my ghetto water polisher. It is a $3 Lee
box filter on a Hagen 301 powerhead, held on with a rubber band and packed
full of filter floss. You can see how much fluorite dust the thing has
caught in just a day.

Anyway, thought some of you might be interested.

And one more question for the people with experience growing it- is dwarf
hairgrass going to live OK 18" away from the lights with slightly less than
3 watts/gallon?

~Empty
--
'You're not friends. You'll never be friends. You'll be in love till it
kills you both. You'll fight, and you'll shag, and you'll hate each other
till it makes you quiver, but you'll never be friends. Love isn't brains,
children, it's blood... blood screaming inside you to work its will. I may
be love's bitch, but at least I'm man enough to admit it.'
Spike