Aquarium Stuff is Fun

I rearranged all the rockwork on the left side, mostly because when I had originally laid them out, I had left too much room in the rear and sides, which left less room in the front. So I mostly just moved everything back - at least, that was the plan, but I couldn't seem to get the rockwork back to the same configuration I had it in. So it took forever to place them all in a way I liked.

I set up the new Rubbermaid shelves we bought so that I could get some of the fish stuff organized and off the floor. It's starting to look a little bit cleaner in the room.

So far I think one of the best/neatest things I've bought for this tank is what's called the Aquacontroller Jr. It basically monitors and controls certain things on the tank, such as lights, temperature, and pH. It comes with its own power center, so I can plug the lights in, tell it what outlet the lights are plugged into, and program what time I want the lights to go on and off. The same with the heaters - I tell it what temperature range I want the tank to stay at, and it will turn the heaters on and off as necessary (it even has a function where it can vary the temps month-to-month to simulate the seasons).

The part that I really geeked out about was the pH monitoring. On the old tank, I had test kits that I had to manually test the pH with, which was a pain, and didn't really let me constantly monitor it. The kits aren't always accurate either - I used to bring water samples to work to double check them! But the Aquacontroller comes with a pH probe which monitors the pH in real time. Very, very cool.

There are more expensive (much more) versions of the controller that even allow you to hook them up to a computer so that you can remotely monitor your tank.

Anyways, I'm sure this is only exciting to me. :)

Lots still to do this weekend - my priorities are to finish getting the room clean and organized, and to set up my RO/DI water unit so that we can set up for water changes.

There are still house projects too! We have yet to finish hanging our cabinet doors, and I need to finish the last of the baseboards and trim in the family room.

No idea when Marc and I will get started on the living room/dining room floor, as we are both feeling a bit lazy now.

I'm going to try to remember to take a picture of our garage this weekend - the mess in there is extremely impressive.

I think we're also going to hit the fish stores this weekend - one of our favorite stores in Fremont is closing up shop and moving to San Jose, which is a real bummer, because we'll probably never go there now. It would be cool to visit once though, because the new store is supposedly going to be very big and cool.

The good news is, that one of the better stores we go to in Hayward is moving to Dublin next month! That's going to be awesome, because I always go to that store to buy my supplies, but it's such a pain to go to Hayward. It could also prove to be a very dangerous thing, having this store only 5 minutes away. :)