Aquariums and Trees

As with most busy weekends, not everything goes to plan and it turned out to be a lot more busy that we thought! Up bright an early on Saturday we got the shopping in for the barbecue before Debbie's appointment at the hairdressers. Debbie trudged home while I put the shopping away and she wasn't impressed at all with her new hair style, exactly the same as it was before! Needless to say, neither of will be going back there, I sorted out Debbie's fringe and she looks gorgeous :-)

Then, for the high point of the weekend, we set of to Sheffield to look round this huge aquarium centre. We were very disappointed when we did eventually find it, it wasn't that big, looked a bit of a dive and didn't have all that much to offer. Plan B came in to action as we set of to a place called Viscum in Barnburgh near Doncaster, we've been before and it's not the cheapest place but it's clean, tidy with a huge selection of equipment and fish and the friendly staff really know their stuff. We got a beautiful aquarium and everything to go with it from fish and plant friendly chemicals to plants and rocks.

Back at the ranch, we had just enough time to put the cabinet together, get the tank on top and put in all the sand. Debbie went to pick up friends for the barbecue while I finished off and got the barbecue started. We had a great evening, so much more chilled than the week before, I even had time to fill up the aquarium and it was looking great until someone pointed out that it was leaking! So there I was, bailing out as fast as I could in the wee small hours lol.

I took the aquarium back on Sunday morning, which they said they would exchange without question but wanted to see the leak in action as they don't get many of them. In the daylight we could see a gap in the seal near the top which was causing the problem. Anyway, they got me sorted out with a new one and I got that home safely, we just managed to get that on top of the cabinet and filled with sand again before Dad arrived for an afternoons tree felling.

Dad took charge and was up the ladder in no time, branches were being flung to the ground faster than I could trim them lol. My Auntie and Uncle brought Grandma over for a couple of hours, they all loved the our house and garden and Grandma had Lucy on her knee all afternoon lol. We called it a day at tea time, there are just a couple of branches at the top left to come down before we can start with the trunk. Debbie took loads of pictures through the afternoon but we've not had chance to load them yet, we'll get some posted tonight or tomorrow.

While we were hard at work in the garden Debbie was hard at work in the kitchen preparing tea and also managed to fill the aquarium and get the filter going. After a gorgeous cottage pie dinner, we got chance to look at the aquarium and it was looking pretty darn good already.

Later in the evening we got all the plants in and switched on the lights, the water is still a little milky at the moment from all the sand but that is starting to clear now. We just sat there for an hour, watching the plants swaying in the current :-)

Only four days at work now, we're off on Friday, Lolly is going to have his bits seen to and we're off to pick out our new tropical fish, poor Lolly!

Paul