Our new aquarium... prototype

During the long project dubbed the "new new lounge" last year, we debated what to do with our fish. We've now had them three years, and I think I can claim that the spectres of my past fishy disasters have been exorcised. We recently discovered another THREE fry in the tank, happily swimming around what has become the "nursery" area (in and around the ocean rock I introduced to solve the acidity problem) which brings to a total of ten the number of cherry barbs we've bred in those three years. Must be doing something right.

But the impending move into the new room gave us the opportunity to introduce a new aquarium. The BiUbe has served us very well and is a doddle to maintain, but it has limitations. At only 35 litres it was pretty much at capacity with the cherries and the ocellated barbs we added about eighteen months ago. Probably over stocked now, if anything, after all the breeding. So the fish we have don't have a lot of room, there's not much scope for adding more plants or rocks or anything to make the tank more interesting for them, and there's no room for extra species. Hence the debate. Were we happy with what we've got, or did we want something new and if so, what?

Armed with my newly built confidence after three years of successful fishy husbandry I was keen to expand. Nikki was too, but had a concern that anything new wasn't TOO big, and wouldn't dominate the new room which she wanted to keep fairly sparsely furnished (despite the - albeit temporary - fact that it is currently home to one more sofa than we actually want. We're hoping eBay or Gumtree will shortly come to our rescue on that score).

After much debate and more than a few visits to local aquarium suppliers and not-so-local websites, we settled on a model. But Nikki retained a slight niggle that it was too big. Too tall. Too dominating. So with the cabinet and tank dimensions off the web and a ready supply of eBay storage and packaging materials, I built the above mock-up. OK, OK, it's not perfect. The top half isn't the right width and the whole thing is too deep, BUT... it's the right height and the right width at the base, so it gave us an idea. Enough of an idea for Nikki to give the green light. I'll be ordering it today :0)

(For a photo of the real thing, here's one on a supplier's website in the Black Ash cabinet we'll be going for to match the TV stand. Ironically the manufacturer's site doesn't have such a good pic)

Incidentally the small green fish visible in the picture above isn't part of our new stock. It's one of the toys Hobo brought with him from his Mum's house, and remains one of his favourites even though it's lost a fin and is looking very tatty these days.