The spoils of Craigslist

Well, after taking a break over two months long I figured it was about time to write a few more posts. The news today was there was a posting on Craigslist that said "free aquarium" so naturally I jumped at the opportunity to email a stranger and hope I get an aquarium.

I sent a message to the random email address and voila, six minutes later I get a response from a Dianne Cheney.  After a few emails back and fourth for some reason she decided that I "won" the tank so I rushed out of the house to go pick it up.  It ended up being a hexagonal tank and she said it is 30 gallons.  As I pulled up to her house I noticed a girl standing there with a stomach that looked like she was 8 months and 3 weeks pregnant.  Anyway, I go and pick up the tank from her garage and shove it in the car.  It was filled with all sorts of weird and probably useless goodies.

Here is Myles checking out the extras 

 Here is a picture minus the cat

So I'm about to drive off and then she says "don't forget the stand".  I walk up and make a horrible joke about how great it is to get a stand also, no laugh, sad day.  Anyway, I shove that into the other side of the car and take off down the road back to school.  Below I have a couple pictures of the stand.

Outside

Inside

Door open

It looks pretty sturdy and it happens to be the cleanest thing that came with the tank.  I put the stand in my room and then fished the tank out of the car and took the goodies out.  The goodies happen to consist of: a light, a cover, a filter that has a bio wheel but a filter bag that doesn't fit, a scrapper thing, and an interesting little scuba diver.  After those are out, I put some paper down on the grass and tipped the tank over to get the nasty black rocks out of the bottom of it. The rocks are currently sitting in our yard and I'm really hoping I wake up tomorrow morning and they are magically gone.  We don't have a hose or a razor blade which means no heavy cleaning of the tank, so I decided I would place it on the stand in my room.  Again a few pictures.

View from my bed

View down from the top

A little closer to look at the mess on the glass

Now I have an empty tank in my room so naturally I want to fill it up.  After thinking for about 20 seconds the decision was to do a leak test.  I headed down to the tub with a blue Petco bucket and filled it up with water. Brought it back to my room and poured it into the tank.

Water in tank

It only took one bucket of those to realize that this was a ridiculous idea because 1. It happens to be a very dirty tank. 2. I will have to take it down to bring it home and clean it up. 3. I don't want to empty out a bunch of water.  After figuring that out it will now sit with that four inches of water until Thursday when I will attempt to empty it.  Will we be able to use the tank? I have no idea, but the price was right and it is actually kind of a cool tank.  Anyway the Two and a Half Men and Big Bang re-runs are over so it is time to go.