So my little teensy fishy world might just have received a serious overhaul yesterday. It remains to be seen, but events may be swinging that way.

First, I got an inline heater. Hydor 300H. Problem with that … The Eheim 2217 has a 5/8″ intake tube, and a 1/2″ (well, 12mm/16mm ID/OD) tube outbound. So if I adhere the manufacturer recommendations (which, in thinking about it, make sense), the filter needs to be on the outbound line of the canister. It would stand to reason that you’d want as clean of particulate matter stream of water going through the heater as possible to avoid any kind of chance of it getting all clogged and stuff. I get it. But that means I need to do a 1/2″ to 5/8″ expand before the heater, and then 5/8″ to 1/2″ reduction on the other side. Doable, for sure, just extra parts I hadn’t counted on buying. Assuming Home Depot or Lowes are not completely understocked, I should be good to go.

Also got the black backing for the tank, which is now up, and looks great.

Found a website that carries bulbs for my light fixture as well, which is awesome, especially since it has long since gone off the market. It is a Current USA Compact Flourescent 4x65W 48″ light. Each bulb is 65W, and 24″ (well, ok, more like 22″ long). So I’ll probably order 2x6700K and 2xactinics for it. That’ll run me, … hmm, maybe $100 when I get around to it. Oh, that website is here, for reference. Very happy to have found that. Nice website. Well laid out, reasonable design and good contrast.

But none of that is what has turned my world upside-down. Yesterday, an ebay-coworker of mine let me know that he is leaving there, taking a new job that is going to take him out of town, and he is not reasonably going to be able to take his tank with him. Its an active tank, with Cichlids, primarily, right now, and its got to go. Dirt cheap. And its 250gal. *blink*blink*. Yup. 250gal. 8’x2’x2′. *drool*

So now we’re all in kind of a panic mode trying to figure out *holyshitwtfoverbatman* we’re going to do with this thing. In the short term, the fish are going to go in the tank that I’m cycling right now, the tank itself is going to go in the garage, and we’re going to see what the heck we’re going to have to do with our basement to rearrange to make room for it. There is no reasonable way to have it upstairs. Full of water, that will weigh roughly 2200 lbs. We would need to build a substructure underneath it just to support the floor, and .. no. Not gonna happen. So yeah, I need to figure this out.

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