I can’t believe I am finally up to date, and that I am making this up as I go along rather than copying what I have already written. I must say, it was a bit traumatic to read back over what has happened since we got the tank; we were truly clueless when we first got it, although I think we learnt fairly quickly (read a couple of months). I cringe to think how fish-happy we were at first, buying them whenever we wanted and chucking them in. Anyway… gotta learn somehow I suppose… I am looking forward to basically starting again and having a really good go. For today, we have started on the Moving House project fairly drastically: we moved all the fish and the filter over to the qt, and it has never looked so exciting and clean in its entire existence. The main tank now has nothing in it except a bit of gravel down the bottom – vacuuming out the water was one of the more gross things we have ever done, I think, because there was just so much poo…

So from here: we move the main tank and stand to the new house (settlement is Monday!), fill it up with water and put the heater on… Then we move the fish over in a bucket, and viola! the tank begins anew. Then we move the rest of the house on the weekend, but that is another story entirely and one I am really, really not looking forward to. Urgh. Anwyay. James is still trying to tell me that upgrading to a new, bigger tank when we move is a good idea, but I am not convinced yet at all. He’s proposing to use either the current main tank or the qt as the filter for an enormous tank. This is really just part of his whole grand scheme, which also includes a webcam, automatic water changes and automatic pH and ammonia monitoring. Originally the webcam was going to be a roving submersible, but that has been negated as impractical (what a surprise). I will believe all of this when it is actually attached to my tank.

The idea that the bristlenose cats would totally clean up the tank in a couple of days was, as suspected, a lie; however, they have done a very good jon indeed. I am quite happy with them, and very glad we got them; they’re cute, and apparently liable to mate some time, as long as we’ve got a male and female; not really sure what I think about this proposition.

And it’s my brother’s birthday.