The whole aquarium thing started about 2 years ago. My room-mate Tracy and I were debating our living room, it looked nice, but it was lacking a certain something..it seemed to sterile, not "comfortable"..so I moved my stereo from my bedroom out to the living room, and that helped a lot! suddenly it was a more liveable room!  and while we were discussing furniture and stereos and such, and what to do with the room in general, I thought "hey, maybe a little aquarium, right there.."  my sister had kept fish in college, and I was already into houseplants and bonsai and carnivorous plants, so it seemed like a natural extension of other interests..so I very casually mentioned this idea to my parents and my sister, something along the lines of "yeah, we were maybe thinking of getting an aquarium for the living room"..and from that my family got it into their heads that "Hey, Scot wants an aquarium!"  so in February 1999, for my 30th birthday, my parents got me a 10 gallon starter kit! it was cool! I went out and got blue (what was I thinking?!) gravel and a few fake plants, 5 neon tertas and 6 zebra danios..later I got a betta and some ottos..I bought about 6 aquarium books that first month, including an Amano book and 3 discus books! it was the Amano book that really sealed my fate though..I started buying amazon swords....and that was that...

Here is the room that needed the aquarium. thats me and Tracy on the couch, and Chris is showing us his foot..and thats the little 10 gallon aquarium, aquarium #1.

 
 

Here it is, tank one in all its glory..

Then in September 1999 Tracy and I got our own apartments, I moved from the
8th floor down to the 7th..and to go along with my new apartment I bought a new 28 gallon bow-front tank!  The new tank was set up on moving day (09/01/99) and all the fish were moved over, along with 3 new Angelfish. the 10 gallon tank was taken out of service..this tank, tank #2, is my current tank..
 
 
 
 

here it is in its first month, September 1999.

ALL the plants visible in these photos are now dead and gone..Except for 3 tiny red crypts, one in each front corner, and one in the back center..those 3 crypts are the "parents" of all the red crypts in my tank today. The amazon swords in the back and the dwarf swords in the front just never made it..I originally had one 55 watt SHOlight, and I think it wasnt enough..also I had a very bad outbreak of Cyanobacteria (Blue-Green Algae) that pretty much wiped out everything..
 
 

There was briefly a tank #3..(for about... 8 months?) a neighbor wanted to get rid of his 10gallon tank, along with a HUGE old angelfish (named Angel, by his Grandson.) So I took over Angel and her tank, I quicky replaced the 10 gallon with a 15tall..and then a 20tall! so really tank #3 was 3 different tanks, but I consider it just one..here is the only picture I have of Angel and her tank, (she also had 2 cory cat friends)

Alas Angel is no longer with us..I moved the 2 cories over to the main tank, and took down her tank...I am thinking about putting up a 38tall Discus tank on the site! hmmmm...
 

So now there is just the one tank, the 28gal bow-front...
Current conditions (January 2001) are:

one 55 watt sho light
one 30 watt cheap disposable florescent bar.
85 watts total light. 2.8 watts/gal

Plants: Red Crypts, Spiral vals, Rotala, Java fern, and Java Moss.
          and a pothos with its roots in the water.

DIY Co2 injection.
PH 7.6
Temp 81F
 

Whisper 3 power filter.

Fish: 3 Angelfish
        6 Glo-light tetras
        2 Siamese Algae eaters
        2 Cory Cats
        1 invisible clown pleco, (VERY nocternal, I never see it!)
        2 equally invisible otto cats.
        and there might still be an amano shrimp in there somewhere.

I change 25% of the water once every 2 weeks, the Algae battle has finally been won! all I have now is green spot algae that grows on the glass..scraped off with a razor blade once a month..took well over a year to reach this state..the plants are MUCH harder to take care of than the fish! but its worth it...
 
 

Here are  more pictures, a chronological photo essay of sorts..im putting them all on this one page for now, just because that is the way I want to do it...since more and more people are going high-speed it hopefully wont be a huge problem.. if it is  too painfully slow let me know and I will do something about it! (maybe...;)

actually I *will* eventually divide this one page up into several pages..including picture pages, with thumbnails! so I wont continue to have ALL my pictures on one page..that is just too much to ask in terms of download time...but for now thats just the way it is, some things will never change, thats just the way it is, oh but dont you believe it..
 
 
 
 

September 1999

 
 

October 2000

 
 
 

January 17, 2001

On January 25 I won a Digital Camera! Kodak DC4800
these are the first (aquarium) pictures from it..
January 30, 2001

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