You are a far better snail catcher than I am. I always missed a few. Now, I never introduce new plants into any of my tanks before they have been soaked in a solution of potassium permanganate. Then to be sure, I pot them up and leave them for a month in a tank housing snail eaters. Happy, happy loaches. LOL! There are various avenues to acidifying tank water, from super cheap but tiresome, which is to soak peat moss in a bucket of water for a few weeks, then strain it and add it to the tank, to easy; a bottle of black water concentrate. Add it a spoonfull at a time until you determine how much you need per gal. to achieve the acidity you want. For such a small tank, you might be as well off with the prepared mix. It's not very pricey. However, very few pet stores keep each tank with ideal water for each species. I suppose they really can't, so the chances are that the water you will bring them home in will be at best, neutral. So hold off making any more adjustments to the water until you have them and acclimate them to it. Then, slowly, over the course of several days, use whatever solution you decide on to acidify a bit. Rasbora are pretty hardy and would do okay in your tank as it is, but if you do give them more of what they do best in, they will positively glow. Otherwise, don't drive yourself to distraction trying to play chemist. It's not as if you are trying to spawn them and it's always better to acclimate the fish to the water than the water to the fish. As long as you keep the water in the ranges you have established, you will be fine. Just take your time acclimating them when you get them home and for that, any clean 3 gal. bucket or other container will do. As long as the ambient air in the room where you are keeping the tank is no more than 4 - 6 deg. lower than the tank temp, you really don't need to float the bag. Lay the bag into the container, cut off the top to allow the fish to gently slip out and slowly exchange bag water for tank water. If you do it in a warm room so the container doesn't get cold, the tank water will acclimate them to the tanks' temp along with its chemistry. If you do one cup of bag water out to 2 cups of tank water in about 4 - 5 times over the course of about 1/2 hr., they should be fine. Then net them into the tank and replace the lost water with fresh. Do it with the tank light off and the room lights dimmed, as they will be coming from total darkness. Once they are in the tank, leave them for at least an hour with only room light before you turn on the tank light. It will be tempting to feed them. Don't. Leave them be until the next morning then give them a light feed. If they show color by Noon that day, you will know they have settled in. The next day, start adding the acidifier and if you keep at it over the course of several days, they should display the colors for which Harlequin's are famous, but is rarely ever seen in pet store tanks. The trick of preventing the fouling of any tank, particularly such a small one, is to feed the fish just enough to maintain them, but not a speck more, so your greatest challenge may be in preventing your Little Miss from feeding them every time she gets near their tank. Have fun. Ours are all long ago grown and gone and I miss them, even though one of them once feed foundered our senior sire, (But Mommy! He was hungry!) those really were the best years of our lives.

Been winter sowing annuals/perennials since the REAL winter set in Hm! mid-January maybe. Gotta love it! Started my EARLY veggies inside in Parks Bio-Dome thingies (ran out of the replacement plugs - too cheap to re-order, been stuffin' 'em with dirt for a while now) in December/January, but messed up. New conclusion: It's better to drive to town and get a bag of good dirt than try to start anything in cocoa-peat!! Started veggies again 2/20-ish (same method - omit cocoa-peat) seran wrapped the little buggers and put 'em on a SW window sill near the heat register. (This location usually works like a champ for me!) Also replanted anything salvagable from the last "learning experience" after brushing off as much cocoa-peat as I could. To date (2/28/2007): Not even a single green leaf from any of the 50+ Winter Sown milk jugs (probably a good thing!) 2 patio tomato plants making an excellent come-back from near death by cocoa-peat (December planting) 3 Early Harvest tomato 3 Early Girl tomato 1 broccoli 1 Jelly Bean tomato also making a come-back from near death by cocoa-peat first true leaves emerging (pathetic I know!) 3 broc 2 bell peppers almost dead - still in cocoa-peat no true leaves (sorry guys, I ran out of dirt!) Sort of using these as a control in the whole cocoa-peat experiment. Planted last week in good dirt and rapidly catching up with last month failures: 90% germination of Mortgage Lifter tomato plants. (my current favorite and a staple in my garden) Just like a Brandywine but better yields and less green shoulders. Yum! 20% germination of Jelly Bean tomato plants. The seran wrap is off, but I think more seeds will still come up. (my current staple for the pick 'em and eat 'em tomato, but I'm also auditioning for replacements) Also germinated are 2 of each of the following tomatoes: Lemon Boy Red Star Big Zac Sun Sugar And the following herbs: Basil Tarragon Thyme Oregano Also the Dolce Petunias (OK! I know they aren't veggies, but the little seeds are so small, and I just love these things. I baby them and raise them inside too!) No signs from the peppers - Just give them time! (They should be up within the week!) Sorry, but true to the post title I actually don't have anything under the lights this year! I've got a great setup in the basement with 3 shelves/ timers/ heater and fans, but since I discovered Winter Sowing 3 years ago I've mainly abandoned the lights. I grow all of my annuals/perenials and I even tried onions this year in Winter Sown cut off milk jugs, punch a few holes in the bottom, plant and put the top back on by wedging it inside the bottom of the milk jug. Label on the bottom with a perminant marker. Works great for me and the top collects lots of rain water this way. I would use it for everything except that I like to start my own tomatoes early. I use the Parks Bio-Domes (well sort of) on window sills for those. Hope that gives you some ideas and encouragement!

You should post your question in the fireplace forum to get lots of opinions. There is such a forum on gardenweb. My neighbor had some sort of deluxe fireplace installed. Not sure if it was an upgrade or if he never had one. He goes through mountains of wood but says it heats his whole house. He has a family room with a cathedral ceiling that has an opening to the second floor hallway and since heat rises...I think he said he used 5 cords of wood. I'm not sure, but I do recall thinking it was a lot of wood and it wasn't free (maybe one batch was free). I don't know how healthy that is to heat your house all the time with wood. Maybe it has doors and a filter...I don't know. He just got his gas bill and it was $50. Mine was $115, but I did have my mother-in-law here for a week with her "thin" FL blood so we had to keep the heat at 70-72 rather than 66-68. Neighbor and I both have tankless water heater. You might consider wood as a cheaper back up option and also ask on the other forum about a unit that can use gas and/or wood. That's what I would do if I had the $. On another note...MY gas usage on the current bill was higher than last year. Last year we used 65 ccf for a 28 day bill period with avg temp on bill listed as 49.6 This year we used 82 Ccf on a 33 day cycle with a temp of 45.5. The longer bill cycle, lower temp and mother-in-law makes it hard for me to see if my 97% heater,air sealing and tankless SAVED me anything over my old 91% furnace without air seal and my 57% water heater. I have to wait for a bill cycle that more closely matches the temp etc to tell if it helped or not.

They are likely saving $$$ because they are not heating their entire home but rather only the room the edenpure is in...nothing wrong with that...just that you could do the same thing with a $25 heater....though I admit it may not look as nice and perhaps be a burn hazzard. Re: FYI: Emergency heat is an electric coil in the airstream of your heatpump. It consumes the same wattage per BTU produced as your Edenpure. If the emergency mode can't keep up, it is either undersized, broken or control issue not kicking in all stages. Our unit is 20 years old and we had an estimate to replace which reccomeded the emergency heat (plates or something)be of greater size or capacity since the ones in there now are marginal for the house size. It (heat pump emergency heat) may consume the same as other heaters but a space heater in a room will not run as long....again its only heating that room. RE: Those amish heaters...ok they just make the wood mantal and the heater is thrown in for free....I find that commercial ammusing...I also chuckle at the part where that proudly state that the heater 'earned the coveted UL approval'...HA---so did my alarm clock!