Gary: I'm pushing 70, but in my mind, I'm still young. When people start thinking old, they start to die and I'm not ready yet. The glass fish tank I had as a child had a painted iron frame with a slate bottom, but all glass ones, usually mounted in wrought iron frames have been around for at a long time. The fanciest I ever saw was in an antique shop in Brighton, England. The proprieter claimed it was early Victorian, which would have put it at somewhere around 1860- ish. It was about 5 ft. high, with a hand blown bowl that fit into upturned arms, with all sorts of elaborate bits of metal and glass embelishments on it; cherubs, fanciful fish, vines, flowers, glass balls, etc. Frankly, I thought it was hideous. But the Victorians did have larger, metal framed glass aquariums and kept the fish alive with continual water changes, which is easy if you have an estate, a conservatory, and an army of servants. Following the Great London Exibition and the Crystal Palace, glass conservatories became all the rage among the monied, landed Brits. My own love affair with small tropicals started in the Balanced Aquarium Room of the Shedd Aquarium in Chicago in the 1940's, when keeping any FW aquarium fish still depended far more on a balance between plants and fish than mechanical filtration and one of the reasons I still strive to affect it. The better balanced the tank, the less dependence on any filter. budcarlson: A survey? Okay, but I honestly don't know that it will help you, because every fish keeper has different likes, dislikes and tanks, as well as their own notions, but for what it's worth.... a) Filter type (duh) Box, sponge, canister, UV. b) Water type (fresh, etc) Fresh c) Gravel/sand/etc It's called substrate, but in my situation, it depends. The baby, grow-out and Q's are all bare, but fairly loaded with live plants in clay pots. I use a lot of low to lower light level types in my black water show tanks, as well as java moss and naja (guppy grass) in the livebearer tanks, as cover for babies and harried fems. I've been experimenting with different substrates in my show tanks. One that's worked well is sand over Flourite, but Gary wrote of using garden soil and I'm finally going to try it in a big stock tank this summer, but it will be outdoors, so if it turns out a muddy mess, I can just stir it up to slurry and use a sewage pump to send it all through a hose to the tomatoes. d) Plants/amount As all of my tanks are Amazon or Asian, all are farily heavily planted, mostly with Cryps and Anubia, but I keep the light fairly high in baby and grow-out tanks and have many wide shallow clay pots of Vals. e) Daily/weekly/monthly/yearly maintenance (filter only) I switch box filters in baby tanks daily, so I can load on the food without fouling the tank. But I don't use loose floss in them. I cut bonded pond filter media to fit the boxes and rinse them clean, getting at least 10 -12 uses from each and it makes changing easier, as does keeping the charcoal and zeno in net bags instead of loose in the filters. But the box filter frames are bleached cleaned after each use, and why I have at least 4 dozen of them. I do them in bulk, weekly. Foam filters may go several days in baby tanks, but are all doubles or quads, which allows me to squeeze half in tank water and the other in fresh, to make sure at least one is always loaded but one very clean, as to draw the most effectively. The plastic housing of the power filters are flushed out at least bi-monthly regardless and washed completely clean as new whenever they accumulate enough gunk to make me think they aren't flowing as well. The sponge pre-filters on power filter intakes are only to trap fines, not for bio-filtration, so are squeezed out in clean water in a bowl with repeated fresh water until it's clear at least bi-monthly. f) Necessary yearly supplies Impossible to make a comparison. I load in frozen foods from F & S once a year during winter, to take advantage of the flat rate shipping. Overwrap a package in foil and seal it into a freezer weight bag and as long as the freezer holds at 0 deg., it will be as good a year later as the day it arrived rock hard via FedEx Overnight. I buy dry food in single ingredient bulk bags from Ken Menard (kenfish.com) and make my own custom mix, with something to appeal to every species I keep. I mix it up in a 20 gal. tub, then pack it into small zip bags, inside larger freezer bags and store it also in the freezer. g) Major long term maintenance issue Keep to a regular maintenence schedule and there aren't any, unless you have a glass tank that suddenly starts leaking and if it does, as long as the glass is intact, resealing one like new is easy- IF you know how, and I do. h) Advantages To what? i) Disadvantages For me, being retired, instead of freezing my ass off in Illinois, messing with fish, I could be in Aruba, eating them fresh caught. j) Realistic monetary investment per year Also impossible to make a comparison. For some, the cost of setting up a 5,000 gal. reef tank is chump change. For others, a 5 gal. Eclipse with a single Betta is their limit. k) Have you ever had a catastrophic filtration system failure, and if you remember or know, why did it happen (and how could it have been prevented). If you had a near-failure, how did you save it? Certainly. That's when I learned the Awful Truth about UG's. It happened because I did everything I was told to do, using powerheads on both uplift's and suctioning the water at changes through them, but in the end, all it took was my getting too sick for a week to do a good change and the gasses trapped under the filter plates exploded and I lost an entire breeding colony of Sterbi. If I ever had a near failure I was unaware of it, because I did something to avert it- probably a water or filter change. Unless the filter quits and you aren't paying enough attention to your tank to even notice it, if you keep the tank clean with regular water changes, a filter break-down alone- CAN'T kill your fish.

Hi toile! In what state do you live? $60 has not been the going rate since the late 60's! I don't know how to post the various links but just type "eteinne" in the search box at the bottom of the page. There are 2 on which I have posted. 1 is "How much do you pay for house cleaning?" and the second is "How do you tell an existing client you want to raise the rate?" Read them and I think U won't have a moments hesitation about the increase in your price. If you do a good job they will pay! I have just re-read those posts and there is 1 family I have been working 4, 20 years. I thought that it was 17 years. That's a long time for a cleaning person. The 1 son just turned 21 so this just dawned on me. He was just born when I started there. None of these kids have ever known another cleaning person with the exception of my self. I just told the kids that if anyone was cleaning at this place things would have to change. The 2 boys leave all of the $ around all over the place. There was $4,000, in Mike's bedroom! On the floor, on the dresser, in the garbage, etc. I counted it all out and placed rubber bands around the various bills and put them into a "Zip Lock" bag. Mike has yet to go to the bank! I just don't get this at all?! Steve

We are about to complete construction of our whole house renovation. We have an entire house of new Sierra Pacific windows and doors (25 windows of various sizes and 2 doors). These windows and doors replace 8 year old Andersen 200 slider windows, Andersen 400 french doors and Andersen 200 sliding door. We looked at various brands - from Marvin, Pella, Andersen, Kolbe, etc. We ultimately went with Sierra Pacific for a variety of reasons - our contractor, who used to build high end home developments, put in a lot of Sierra Pacific windows, and had overall positive experiences with them. Our architect, who designs mainly high end homes, specs out a lot of Sierra Pacific windows and has SP windows in his home, and had no problems with them (except for the handles). Ironically, our architect did spec out Andersen 400s in our house (that was when we were going to reuse the Andersen 200s in the back of the house). We were able to get the look that we wanted (simulated divided lights) in the grid pattern that we wanted, at a budget that was workable for us (given that we are now 15% over budget on our construction, I'm glad we didn't spend more for the windows). Finally, when we compared window performance against various brands, they were within range of each other, and they were going to work ok in our relatively mild climate here in the SF bay area. I also stopped by the SP showroom and customer tech support center one day and talked to a lady who handles some of the customer calls. She told me that in general, most of the calls she takes in are for customers who had issues with the handles, weather stripping, etc. or minor things (of course, take that with a grain of salt since she works there and can tell me whatever she wants to disclose). However, her comments, along with my home developer turned contractor (in the recession) experiences in installing many of these windows, have helped us feel comfortable. The windows are in our house now, although we are still a few weeks away from completion. Some things in general about the windows from my personal experiences 1. on the doors, handle operation felt different that with my previous Andersen 400 french doors. It wasn't as smooth, and had a more clunky feel to it. The same was observed with the operation of the locking mechanism. It wasn't a rough operation, it just didn't feel as "substantial" as my old Andersen. This is not a comment about the quality, longevity, but more about the feel as compared to my old Andersen. 2. We had casement windows and awning windows (no sliders). We never had casement windows before, so I have no basis of comparison with our old Andersens. The crank operation was easy and smooth, although I wasn't crazy about the handle design. It also was very easy to latch the window shut once the window had been closed. the handles were not all solid construction, but rather metal sheet that has been rolled and formed into a handle. That may be why the tech support person said handles was an area they get calls on. 3. One thing I wasn't sure about, and it seemed a little suspect to me, was their "leaf" weatherstripping at the bottom of the window. It didn't seem to me that it could keep out the drafts, as it looks rather insubstantial... I realize with the windows latched shut (especially with casement windows), you would get a pretty solid seal against the elements, regardless of this leaf weatherstripping. That said, I don't know have any first hand experience with this potential area (since we haven't moved into the house yet). 4. at the corners where the aluminum cladding comes together, the joints were in general well done. I noticed a couple of windows where it wasn't as nice and clean looking as the others, but it does seem to be well sealed. 5. a little bit of a nit, but in most of the windows, the mounting flanges were powder coated just like the aluminum cladding on the window frame. There were a couple of windows where in one section of the mounting flange the powder coating was thin or not there. The mounting flange is going to be hidden and covered by the trim boards, so it doesn't matter anyway, but I would have expected the painter to just paint it so that every square inch of the cladding, whether hidden or not, is coated.. (that's just me). 5. Overall, the windows seem well built, although I can't comment on the design. So far, I'm relying on my architect and builders experiences on longevity and it seemed to be working ok for them. 6. Although SP offers a lot of different color options for the aluminum cladding, I found that in our case, we weren't looking for a radical color and that we could have found something similar with the other windows that would have worked for us. I think for us, it came down to how much more we were going to get for the additional cost of going to Marvin and whether that would be worth it to us, versus spending that money somewhere else for an upgrade. Ultimately, we felt that given our climate and the window design we had, the SPs were good enough and that going with other windows wouldn't have given us a noticeable increase in value. Hope this helps.

For me, as an amateur, I would not reuse the bleach water. I wouldn't know the correct smell nor would I want to have it on my hands. So fresh bleach water for me! "I have had limited experience with virused plants . . ." Good for you Bruce! After removing dead tissue, "they will come back SLOWLY if they are healthy." Makes sense! Thank you! I would like to note here that the concentration of bleach can vary depending on what brand you are buying. It would be good to check that out. You know what I would love? I would love to be there when you Bruce are dividing and/or redoing some of your hostas. I think that that would be a real education for me! But I will dream on . . . well, that's part of gardening, don't you think . . .