Jane I am laughing! I picture you beautiful house with the maze of cords and lights! Buy higher watt cfls for the lamps. Don't add more lamps. I actualy began taking away! It makes all the difference. H turned me on to this place for good bulbs (see link below). The colour of the bulbs are gorgeous! The site is a little tricky. 42w you will want a 5100k. You won't see that option until you click on the 42w for 7$. Click the 42w and then you will see the options. I think the 5100k are 14$ a piece. The 85 w is unbelievable. Its big but anything I had inside that was stalled popped right out! I can grow vanda types inside. No problem. I think they are about 26$. You can get away with a shorter run time with the more powerful lights. I know what you mean about tripping. Last winter I started 3 fires with extension cords and got a bruise the size of a grapefruit on my leg. I am happy to get rid of the balllast tubes. Kept on smashing my head on the edge! I looked like an orchid POW. You'll just have to hand out sunglasses at your door if you upgrade! I also had a visit by Chicago's Finest when I first moved in. I have an 85w in the window now. It keeps the burglars away. I grow little Dragon Trees I brought from FL. They look a lot like Cannabis when they are small. Have to keep them out of the ground floor window. Live next to a small restaurant that's packed with young YUPPIES on the w.e's. My lights are a cruel reality check after 6 beers and 4 shooters! Clara High on Orchids Bllomed under an 85W CFL Here is a link that might be useful: Great CFL's

I wish I'd seen this forum earlier. Poor guy. First of all, it may have been the 100% water changes that killed him. Stark fresh water can be difficult for fish to live in. believe it or not, old water is healthier, provided it's clean, than fresh water from the tap. The trick is to do PARTIAL water changes, not 100% ones. I highly suggest never doing a 100% water change. You might also think about it from this point of view; temperature changes of more than 1 degree can put a fish in shock and stress it out, which makes it more likely to get a disease in the first place. (Aside from potentially dying from the shock.) The water temperatures need to be exactly the same before you transfer your fish to new water. Someone should have advised Ezzy not to do a 100% water change like that. Wish I saw this thread earlier. Also, gravel is a must. It seems that the tank/bowl did not have any substrate at all. This is a bad thing because a substrate is needed for helpful bacteria to grow. The kind that break down waste and thusly help control the ammonia and nitrate/nitrite levels. To anyone who reads this, gravel, pebbles, sand, or the beta-hobby-popular glass/plastic beads MUST be at the bottom of the tank for there to be a natural cycle within it. Also, I can't believe someone would take a fish which is very practically named "Siamese Fighting Fish" and put them next to each other. I could tell by that comment alone that Ezzy is extremely new to fish keeping. It's common knowledge that putting 2 betas together like that would stress them out. A person should be able to sense that they aren't really "friends." (I suppose they're as good of friends as an Oscar and a goldfish. The Oscar loves the goldfish, for his part.) And, yes, even in separate tanks, if they see each other they'll be going crazy trying to get the fish in the tank next to them. Very simple thing to avoid and it's common knowledge. Even the people at Petsmart will tell you to let a new tank run a couple of weeks with no fish in it before introducing a catfish or another hardy fish. They will also tell you to float the fish in it's bag of water IN the tank for at least 15 minutes to allow the water to gradually equalize with the tank and prevent shock in the fish. Furthermore, most Petsmart employees know that Betas will fight each other and that putting 2 bowls close together is not something that should happen long-term. These are simple rules that all fish keepers need to know and it appears that Ezzy wasn't aware of them. I hope this helps someone who is trying to care for an ill fish, because you can contribute to its demise if you stress it out too much. Always be aware of the effect YOU have on the tank/bowl, and don't get tunnel vision trying to remove the disease at the cost of your pet's life.

you may want to get the entire building to adopt a change and address this. I agree with you completely on that issue, which is actually why I have liked the current setup in our bin--we are greatly motivated to unplug it. I don't want something that operates with a switch. Extension cords make me & DH antsy, and we won't go upstairs and leave them plugged in. In fact, right now we have to unplug it in order to close and lock the door, which is why I haven't yet just used cord slips to anchor the cord to the wall. And why I may never do that (but I have tried stick-on temporary cord clips, but putting the cord in and out each time we were down there was too much for them, and they were pulled or fell off the wall). I might try the Velcro idea, because it would be so fast to stick the cord up when we're working, and pull it back down when we're done. But you've also got me thinking that maybe I'll bring this issue up to the rest of the building, and ask them to show me their lighting setup for their storage closets/bins. (I'm the director in charge of electrical, which means I would have the authority to address this without seeming like a nosy person. And it explains why I am crabby at having people assume I am so stupid that I'd modify the actual wiring. With lamp cord, no less!!) And I can check to be sure that the other lighting setups are safe. Because at the receptacle the other day, I spotted someone's cord still plugged in. Nobody's bin was open, and nobody's light was on. So I unplugged it. That also gives me an opening to bring this issue up.

It warmed up a little so I spent a few minutes on it. I replaced the elbow with one from Lasco, and that DID fix the spraying leak at the elbow! But now I see that I have another (maybe two) leaks at the lower connector; the 1/2" to 3/4" reducer that screws in to the controller. I wasn't able to try heating it up yet, but I did put the hose clamp back on. I tightened it until I was afraid that I'd crack the connector, but it didn't seem to have any impact on the leak at all :-/ Here are some pics: The hose on the left goes to another controller in the back yard. I set it up last year and there are no problems there. The second one is simply a garden hose, and the third goes to another controller that I haven't set up yet (both are in the off position). The fourth (farthest right) is the one I'm working with now. Here you can see a small leak coming from just under the hose clamp. It's a fairly steady stream, though; I blew on it to remove any standing water just before taking this picture. This is the other side of the same connection. It's kind of hard to tell, but I THINK there's another slower leak on this side.