Now it can be told - how I destroyed my first aquarium

This happened several years ago, and its repercussions are still being felt up to now. The 35-gallon aquarium I have is actually a ‘hand-me-down’, but its by no means my original aquarium. though my original was likewise a black-bordered aquarium, like the one I have right now, it was basically newer and its glass was not as scratched as the one I have right now.

So what happened to my original aquarium? A simple case of gravity and stupidity, really - the first being a natural law, the second; borne out of a belief (poor gamble really) that I could beat the gravity odds.

See, I was cleaning the aquarium - and I mean, really cleaning this one, so I removed the fishes… got the gravel into a pail to clean it up, removed the water of course and cleaned the filter. Now,since our water pressure was basically weak that day, I had some difficulty holding the hose in place, as the water was trickling into the aquarium.

Feeling a bit impatient and tired of holding the hose, I looked for something to keep it in place, but could not find anything that would hold the hose in place. What I found, actually, was a small dumbbell and decided that if I could balance it at the aquarium’s corner, as it holds down the hose, I could then do other things while the water filled itself up.

Unfortunately, gravity had other plans… I had just let go of the dumbbell and taken a few paces away, when the dumbbell slips form the corner, and in true Murphy’s Law fashion, it falls into the aquarium, hits the bottom, and goes through said bottom… spilling the already accumulated water (possibly 5 gallons of water)
onto the floor. So… I had to act fast or just keep my fish in the large water container where I had placed them. Lucky for me, I remember my dad having an old aquarium, which, for some reason I was not privy to, ws no longer being used. So I asked for it… drove to Paranaque… loaded the old aquarium… drove home and cleaned said aquarium.

So as I said earlier, this stupidity with the dumbbell… its still being felt, at least, until I get to buy a new aquarium. What was I thinking of? Boy… did I learn a lesson.

In the past, i was too embarrassed to mention this… but now, I can easily laugh about the experience. So what made me bring it up now? I've been transferring blog posts from here to my mirror blog, and I came across several old aquarium blogs. Naturally I remembered this, and decided to share it.