IT IS HERE

It has arrived! My new aquarium is here, with its delicious 160x48x48 centimeters and 370 liters (that's about 63x19x19 inches and 98 US gallons for you non-metricians). Yum! =) It was custom-built with special measurements and a stand that goes with our bookshelf, and was brought into our livingroom on Friday (sooner than I expected) by the guy who made it and his son. A handmade aquarium and stand fits a crafter, I suppose?

The new tank is inspected by my giant knitted Pleko. He's quite interested in that big piece of wood, I think.

This is a dream-come-true type of thing. I've been planning and saving up for this for years, and now with the new apartment I'm finally able to get a nice big aquarium for my fishies. I'll combine fish from two of my old tanks into this one, but there should be room for one or two new species as well.

(By the way, the piece of wood in the left corner is heavy. It occured to me, as I was dragging it home through town from the fish shop, sweating and gritting my teeth in the hot sun and with passers-by looking rather amused, that I must really be some kind of an idiot. Why else would I not only do things like that, but pay money for this "pleasure" and be ridiculously happy about finally being able to get this expensive and heavy log? Yeah. Sounds like an idiot to me.)

It is almost as long as me. =)

The wood is scrubbed (ugh) and the sand is washed (UGH). I skipped the last 20 kg of sand and went for "only" 60 kg. The sand looks great, natural-looking with a reddish tint, but it is awful to wash. I've rinsed it at least a billion times and the water is still cloudy. I believe the result will be worth the back ache, though. The good news is, all the annoying labour is done and now it's on to decorating it and other such fun bits! Yay!

Current status: Half-filled and full of tiny dust. Not quite there yet.