Queen B

Posts Tagged ‘goldfish’

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For a goldfish!

In Nothing to it but to do it, Who comes up with this stuff? on January 28, 2010 at 10:56 pm

Sometimes I ask myself what you people want to hear about my boring old life.  Nothing, I think, and therefore it’s SO easy for me to blow off blogging and instead mess with the fish bowl, or boil eggs, go to the library, or make piles of laundry all over the house.  That’s been it lately.  A whole heap load of regular old crap that no one really needs to know about.

So anyhow, you wanna hear about my fish bowl?!  I can tell you’re just brimming with excitement.  I’m so excited about it.  I’ve been trying to take pictures, but it’s the basement for one, and we are not the neatest in the midst of a project for two.  Both good reasons why you aren’t seeing it yet.  It also takes us some time to get things done on account of us being cheap, I mean CREATIVE.

You see, hobbies are EXPENSIVE if you aren’t careful.  We have determined that pet keeping may be one most expensive hobbies we have around here.  You can get a bunny for like $30, but the cage is $75, bedding costs $20 a bag, and then there’s food, timothy hay, toys, etc.  The bedding is what really gets me though, because rabbits can stink up fresh bedding in about 20 seconds flat.  By the way, have you ever tried to cut the toenails of a bunny?  Did you know that bunnies can and will occasionally bite?  Oh yea, thanks Easter Bunny!

Anyhow, back to the fish.  The tank was a steal from Craig’s list (purchased about a year ago when I was working full time).  It was previously a reef tank, and when purchased we also got a huge skimmer, and three pumps, and two wet dry filter boxes, lots of lighting ballasts and hoods and bulbs… tons of stuff that we didn’t really need.  So right off the bat we’re going to recoup some of our money when we get off our butts and sell it off on Craig’s List ourselves.  We made our own wet dry filter from an old 55 gallon tank that we already had, so all that cost anything was a piece of acrylic from Home Depot and some silicone to hold it together.  We had to buy the lumber to build the tank stand, and the walls to the room, but the door came from the Habitat for Humanity ReStore for $5.00.  We also got a bar sink and countertop from ReStore with a whopping total for that setup at $5.00 as well.  I cannot stress enough what a HUGE help it is to have a sink right there next to the tank.  I drained the entire tank last night, and I didn’t have to lug buckets, and not one drop of water hit the floor.  Not ONE!  Anyhow, the sink stand was made from warped pieces of scrap wood left over from another project, and since it is function over fashion, it’s the best $5.00 we’ve probably ever spent.  The tank is 190 gallons, and based upon the info given on a bag of gravel at the pet store, you are supposed to have a certain amount of gravel in the tank.  I can’t remember exactly how much you’re supposed to have (and I’m too tired to attempt any math tonight, so sorry if you start to think that I’m an idiot when I finish this sentence), but when I calculated it at the store it was going to cost approximately $200 for enough gravel in the tank at $20 per bag.  Yes I know that’s 10 bags, I’m not that tired!  I just don’t know how much was in each bag.  We went to Home Depot and instead bought pea gravel for $2.53 per bag.  We needed 5 bags.  It looks better, too.

Here’s the kicker.  This is my fish tank, they will be my fish, my project, my responsibility, but my husband has his heart set on having moonlights on the tank.  I can’t tell you why, he just decided.  I think it was even a condition of helping me to get it going.  We found a light fixture at a local pet store on clearance that had moon lights in it.  They wanted $600 for it.  ON CLEARANCE!!!  Bitch, please!  My husband bought 6 blue led night light bulbs from Menards for $3.99 per two pack.  He went to the garage and fetched a 6 bulb cord we haven’t been using from our Christmas village, drilled 6 holes in a piece of thin plywood to fit the bulbs through, and hung it over the tank.  Voila!  Instant moonlight.  For how much?  Twelve dollars, which is a savings of like $588!  Who can beat that?  He even put it on a remote control for me.  So sweet.

So yes, we’re STILL working on the tank.  It seems like it’s taking forever, and it probably is.  Our goal is to get fish a week from this weekend so that we can empty the tank one more time and cycle it, redo some of the pipes that we think could work better, and move the pump which is currently in a spot that we’ve decided is difficult to access once the drywall goes up.  I just don’t know what we’ll do with all of our free time once this fish tank is done!  Oh right, watch fish swim around in the fish tank.

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Giving up

In Nothing to it but to do it on January 23, 2010 at 10:46 pm

Well, I haven’t posted for a few because I find that I’ve bored even myself with all the Ph and water talk.  My Ph, my weight, and my overall feeling of wellness is unchanged.  I don’t like going to get water gallons filled, and I am thinking of giving my experiment up.  I have had no symptoms of any detox from drinking the magic water, and even though I wanted to do this experiment for a month, I just don’t know that it’s even worth driving out of town every three days to have gallons of water refilled.  It bothers me to drink water from a big plastic jug, too, by the way.  I like getting my water from the tap.  I haven’t made my decision with 100% certainty yet, but I will be out of water tonight so I have to decide tomorrow.  Besides, as I stated, all this water talk made me think of my fish bowl.

So instead of blogging, we’ve been getting the fish tank going.  Going forward, let it be known as Basement Finishing Project Number One.  And when I say we, I mostly mean my husband.  Right now we’re in the construction phase, which involves power tools, and measuring, and difficult stuff you have to be strong for.  I am not strong.  I used to be strong, but I am no longer.  I’m the designated assistant.  Assistants do stuff like find and hand over the tools, hold things up while they’re being screwed in, hold the end of the two by four when it’s being cut, give approving thumbs up signals sometimes, and tell him all the OTHER things we should do with the basement.  You know, when Project Number One is done.  This will be a whole new place when I’m finished with it.

In case I didn’t mention the size, my fish bowl is 190 gallons.  It measures 5′ x 30″ x 24″.  It looks a little something like this currently:

Well, actually the water is much clearer since I took that picture.  The blue wood is the stand that we made for it a couple of years ago when we originally purchased the tank on Craig’s List and planned this project.  We painted it with some epoxy waterproofing paint.  There is a tray in the bottom that is sealed with a silicon sealant so that if the wet/dry filter ever overflows (God forbid) we’re covered without flooding the place.  One of my husband’s many ingenious ideas found on this project.  He also built a wet/dry filtration system from our old 55 gallon tank, plumbed all of the PVC, and is currently building the room around the tank.

We placed the tank so that it would enable us to create a little room around it to house the equipment and accessories.  It also encloses the rough in for the sink that was sticking out of the concrete floor of the basement.  See?  We’re problem solvers around here!  The builders put it in for a basement bar, but they didn’t leave enough space behind it to actually put in a bar!  So it has been sticking up out of the concrete, unused, since 1978.  Obviously a drain and sink are very useful in the world of fish keeping, so it’s like the silver lining that just won’t quit.  Enclosing it will also quiet the sounds of the water and the pump and such.  We don’t want to hear the tank, just see the fish.  We also didn’t want a commercially available stand because they’re ugly.  When the wall and room are completed, this tank will be framed out like a picture, or a window, and the framing will have gypsum painted walls just like the rest of the basement.  To the side, there is a double door into the room that we picked up at the Habitat for Humanity ReStore.  We would like to find some brass fish door handles for the double door, but haven’t come across them quite yet.  I plan on everything about this project being very cool, just so you know.

I hope fish like live music, because the drums are very near by and band practice is at our house!

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Holding

In Healthy shmealthy, Random nonsense on January 16, 2010 at 10:03 pm

Last night I had pizza for dinner.  Not big news or anything, but two things happened to led up to that decision.  I spoke to a coworker after writing the last post and found out that ANOTHER person was fired yesterday after I left for the day.  Someone I like very much and feel is maybe getting the shaft.  She worked in another office, and there are plenty of girls in that office who I have heard do a less than stellar job but are rumored to be protected by the VP of that office.  My friend was a transplant from our location and therefore was (possibly) selected by said VP as the one to go.  Horseshit.  OR perhaps I am completely misguided and she totally had it coming because she sucks.  I do not know.  Second, I was hungry, and had a craving for Lou Malnati’s pizza even though I knew full well what it was going to do to me.

The pizza was delicious.  I think it really freaked out the many, many other diners around my table when I flew into my fit of a thousand sneezes as we were wrapping things up.  It’s like clockwork.  I sneezed again, and again, and again, and again, about oh…. a thousand, maybe a million times.  And then it ended, and I was stuffy, and by the time we got home I was exhausted, and I fell asleep almost immediately when I got home.  I didn’t even finish up my requisite water for the day or take my evening vitamins or anything!

So when I woke this morning, I was interested in my numbers, even if they are skewed by the massive increase in water intake.  The amount consumed daily was based upon my initial weight measurements, btw.  If I was one of those icon-using people, I would follow that up with a sad face made of punctuation.  But I’m not.  Anyhow, this morning my Ph on the non-human Ph measurement strips was back at the highly acidic <6.2.  Based upon the color, way less than 6.2.  My weight gain is holding at 2 pounds gained.  Lucky me, even with the pizza.  Still no change in how I feel.  No burst of energy, no change my cold right hand, etc.

I phoned this morning to get the empty bottles refilled to continue my experiment.  The shop where I attended the “presentation” had a sign on the counter that you could try the water free for 30 days.  She sounded a little less than thrilled on the phone when I called to refill, questioning when I had been there as if she was measuring the amount of time between when she actually gave me the water and when I was asking for refills.  Maybe I’m just paranoid or ultra sensitive.  I understand that she’s closing up shop at her physical location (to focus on the water thing full time, supposedly), so I assume that it will become harder if not impossible to continue the experiment on the water for a full thirty days by getting the bottles I have refilled.  Once I got there, she was nothing but friendly and chatty as she filled my bottles of water.

Other than that, all this water talk has gotten us thinking about the goldfish tank.  So today we are putting a little effort into that.  Something for me to stare at for relaxation.  I’ll have to post photos another day.

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