Well since we had no fish club in the area, I decided to start one. Seems simple, create a name and get people to meet and join the club. Well let me tell you, it's alot of work! Just getting the groundwork done to have the initial meeting is a ton of work, then there is the newsletter, website, bylaws, meeting topics, all the way down to finding chairs, just so much to do. Well the website is started http://www.desertfishclub.com and I guess that's one thing I can check off my list for now. So much to do, maybe that's why there wasn't one around here before?

Well we finally got the new lights we ordered for the 87g and wow are they bright! It's a Customsealife Bright Light hood with 2 x 96 power compacts. Our first time using these long power compacts and I must say that even though it's only 2.2 watts per gallon, this has to be the brightest tank we have. Of course the 8800k bulbs add to the brightness and the other tanks only have 6700k bulbs on them but are in the 3-4 watt per gallon range. I'll post a pic of the lighting setup, wasn't easy to find a reasonably priced 72" hood, but since customsealife went out of business, you can find their excellent products discounted most places.

Well the new tank is setup and cycled in 7 days (thanks to plenty of filter media from other tanks) and the clowns all went in yesterday. The two new clowns are a bit bigger than the others and stayed away from the original 4 for quite some time. By morning there was a big group of all 6 clowns swimming together :)

The cories all found each other by morning too, and even allowed the one oddball cory to join them (he was a freebee from an auction and we still arent sure what he is)

The Chocolate Zebra Pleco has staked out his cave in the driftwood, although he doesn't seem too upset when the clowns intrude (the clowns already have a rock cave and a tree stump)

Soon we'll add the Zebra loaches and maybe a rubberlipped pleco to finish off this tank.

The Ehiem Liberty 200 HOB we got for this tank is great, so quiet, perfect for a bedroom tank (we also have a Magnum 350 and Fluval2 intenal on this tank too.

Should have updated pics on the other site soon.

Sorry for not posting or ranting the past few days, but I've been away. And of course our trip gave me something to talk about. Aside from the heat in Vegas, and getting really sick, we did manage to visit a few fish stores that a friend had given us info on. Two of these stores were very nice, lots of interesting fish and tanks. So yes we drove home from Vegas with an 87 gallon river tank (72" long) and some large clown loaches (5-6") as well as some baby cories. Also had a disaster in the 55g when the DIY CO2 backed up into the tank, well I needed to move that soon anyway, so after a complete teardown and cleaning, it's in another room and the spot for the 100g is now free.

And yes I had to build a stand for the 87g, still have to do one for the 50g too. I'm starting to think we should just flood the house and have an airlock with scuba gear in the garage :)