Pulling it all together

The tank comes Tuesday so I've spent the last few days (especially sat and sunday) gathering the various smaller bits and pieces. These include: Soil substrate for the tank, gravel for the rear of the tank, silver sand for the front, bog wood, some slate and a substrate cable heater. Unfortunately most of this stuff takes quite a bit of preparation. The slate pieces are easy, just a wash off. The bogwood however needs several days soaking to reduce the tannin that it will release. Similarly the gravel and sand is actually very dirty and has to be extensively rinsed. I spent most of the afternoon getting the gravel clean - but haven't started on the sand yet. An amazing amount of muck is released and it takes several rinses to get the water coming through clean. The wood pieces are now soaking in a water butt outside, it'll be next weekend before they're ready. The main component I'm still missing is a wooden plinth I plan to place underneath the cabinet, this is so I can make the surface absolutely level - clearly important for a big tank. I plan to use a thick piece of chipboard - I went to pick it up from the DIY store (including getting it cut to shape) only to find they don't don't provide the board cutting on a Sunday - cheers. It'll have to be done Tuesday morning. The other thing we had to do yesterday was clear the site in the living room where it'll all go - this itself took 2 hours as up to now we've had a big bookcase in the position, so all the books had to come off etc etc. It's getting very close now....