And while we were on vacation

The neon is still alive and it looks as if the fungal (?) problem that the others had is getting better.

The three baby corydoras are now noticably corys. (Photo soon.)

The "couple" of eggs I saved and put in with them? Apparently there were more than a couple, and they all survived. The Daughter says there are six tiny babies in there with the three older ones now. 

Uh oh. Gonna need a bigger tank now, for sure!

The neon is still alive and it looks as if the fungal (?) problem that the others had is getting better.

The three baby corydoras are now noticably corys. (Photo soon.)

The "couple" of eggs I saved and put in with them? Apparently there were more than a couple, and they all survived. The Daughter says there are six tiny babies in there with the three older ones now. 

Uh oh. Gonna need a bigger tank now, for sure!

So many fishies! 

The neon is still alive and it looks as if the fungal (?) problem that the others had is getting better.

The three baby corydoras are now noticably corys. (Photo soon.)

The "couple" of eggs I saved and put in with them? Apparently there were more than a couple, and they all survived. The Daughter says there are six tiny babies in there with the three older ones now. 

Uh oh. Gonna need a bigger tank now, for sure!

You'll have corys to share soon! So many babies

Sent from my Nexus 5X using Tapatalk

I've never had even one baby live, in the past, so this is kinda a surprise.

On the good side, they like to live in like little swarms, so they will all be happier. But I'm really going to need to get a proper tank in a few months. I've only got a little 5 gallon one now.

Here are two of the three from the first batch. (The third one likes to hide under the moss ball.)
They have their little barbels and everything. 
I need to be sourcing a good big tank, and a sturdy stand to put it on, and some nice non-sharp sand for them to root in. (They love to root in sand for their supper.) 

Oh, gosh. She's spawning again! 

I have kept corys for years and I've never seen behaviour like this. We were lucky if we got a half-dozen eggs once a year, not a hundred every few weeks! I think when we get the new tank set up that perhaps Big Bertha should stay in the old one with a few of her babies (that are large enough to not be lunch) for a while, just to give her a rest!

So, once again I've been looking for aquariums and stands. I am resigned to the fact that an aquarium here will cost me four times what it would have in the States.  I contacted a local pet supply store that has several branches and asked about aquariums. Much back and forth via email, and finally got an answer that the one nearest me had "one 60ltr tank in stock" and they could show me what they could special order. If I had been handling customer service for them, since the said customer (me) had said I was going to have to take a train and a couple of buses to get there anyway, I think I might have suggested one of the other stores in town that had a larger selection in stock. Especially since said customer had said they wanted to see the tanks in person. But no, just a "you can visit that store and they can show you what they can order for you."  Needless to say, I will not be traveling that trip to look at one tank.

More annoying are the aquarium stand options here - or lack thereof. A 60 litre (roughly 15 gallon) aquarium needs a stand that will hold at least 120lbs of weight, just for the water. Add the tank, sand, etc., and we're looking 150-180lbs.  A typical table or bookshelf won't handle that. So I've been shopping. What is available here is just, well, butt-ugly and looks like it's particle-board with cheap veneers. And isn't cheap in cost!  So I looked on Amazon US to see what they had and fell in love with a few.

There's this one, a very practical model, for about $40.
And there's this one, which is better looking and made of wood for $50.

Can I get them here? Nooooo. Would shipping cost me an arm and a leg if I had them shipped to my mail forwarding service? Yeppers. So I am left with getting an ugly workbench that I'll need to find a nicer board for the top for, for now.   And when I go back to the States next I'll have one of the nice ones in a box with me when we come back home!

Gumtree?

https://www.gumtree.com/search?search_category=all&q=aquarium&search_location=glasgow

Nan, there are international shipping companies which act as an intermediary in the US (and other countries) for stores which do not provide shipping out of the country.
When you sign up, you are given a physical address with your own individual suite number (not a PO Box, just to link you with the item)

They then check the goods, , you confirm the price you paid for customs purposes and they will send it on to you in the UK. You can also have smaller packages consolidated to save on shipping price. You pay for the shipping obviously but it's competitive because they get bulk discounts.

I've only used one once but the experience was good for something that I wouldn't otherwise have been able to have sent to me in the UK.

eta. Sorry, I didn't notice that you'd ruled this option out already but I'll leave the post here in case it helps anyone else. 

Yeah, I've been watching Gumtree.

I am hesitant to buy an aquarium or a used heater there - you never know if it's been leaking or has other damage. When you have that much water in a tank, the last thing ya want to find out is that the last person had it sitting on an uneven base and stressed the joint seals enough that they give way in the middle of the night after you first bring it home and fill it up!  (I got a 10 gallon off the equivalent of Craigslist once, and just that thing happened. Thankfully, the tank was cycling so there were no fish in it.) Or putting your fish in and electrocuting them.

I was hoping to see a nice stand there, but they have only got the ones that seem to be available at the pet shops, which are really kinda ghastly.  I'm keeping an eye on Gumtree, though, just in case.  It really is kind of amazing about the lack of options, but I guess they just don't have the quantity of fishkeepers in the UK that they do in the States, so that means there's not the profit margin a manufacturer would get in bulk sales. The styles here are different, too. Which is not unexpected (different culture and all), but most of what I've seen in person in the shops all runs towards cheap Ikea-look cabinets. 

I wish I had a garage and some hand tools - I gave all mine to AmVets when we moved. I'd just go get some finishing lumber and screws, and bucket of paint.... Ah, well. The workbench won't look that bad. I'll need to paint the top to seal it from water damage if I can't find a nice finished board to set on top. And it's of a size that Thor Hamsterdahl's cage will fit on the shelf below it, so we'd have tower-o-critters in one place in the living room. 

I'm not familiar at all with paints and sealants here. Any idea what a good brand of just a basic mat black paint that would seal that surface might be?

Nan, there are international shipping companies which act as an intermediary in the US (and other countries) for stores which do not provide shipping out of the country.
When you sign up, you are given a physical address with your own individual suite number (not a PO Box, just to link you with the item)

They then check the goods, , you confirm the price you paid for customs purposes and they will send it on to you in the UK. You can also have smaller packages consolidated to save on shipping price. You pay for the shipping obviously but it's competitive because they get bulk discounts.

I've only used one once but the experience was good for something that I wouldn't otherwise have been able to have sent to me in the UK.

eta. Sorry, I didn't notice that you'd ruled this option out already but I'll leave the post here in case it helps anyone else. 

Thanks! But yeah, we use US Global Mail. It was in the $350 range for shipping, cheapest available rate. For  $50 stand.    I'll check out some of the other companies, as maybe they might be cheaper.

I think that brand must belong to PetCo, as I haven't seen it anywhere else other than PetBarn (?) in Australia. If I could sort out who actually made it, I might be able to find out if it was sold elsewhere under a different name.

The metal frame has a lot of appeal, especially the leveling-feet option. This flat is old and the floors do slope, so I'm going to have to get shims under the two front legs of the workbench to level the tank surface up.

This one is deeply discounted and quite spectacular! 

https://www.brownspetrange.com/collections/aquariums/products/column-expedition-acrylic-aquarium-80l-black

Also in white.

I had also considered getting a set of  Kallax shelf/cubicles from Ikea and adding some cut-to-measure (if the Home Depot will do it) 2x4s inside the cubbies to bear the weight. We have a set of grey ones, with a faux bamboo trim on the front. It still would look kinda cheap, but we could put boxes or something in the cubes to hide the added brace boards.

The one we have is six cubes and is full of LP records, and is doing well with the weight. I emailed Ikea and they said that it couldn't hold more than 34kg per shelf. (I'd seen an Ikea hack where someone had a huge tank on a set of these. She was/is definitely courting disaster!) I'm thinking, though, that with the added bracing of the 2x4s and another, solid wood top (painted to match) it might do. (But it'd still be ugly.)

For now, I think it'll be the cheap workbench.

This one is deeply discounted and quite spectacular! 

https://www.brownspetrange.com/collections/aquariums/products/column-expedition-acrylic-aquarium-80l-black

Also in white.

Yeah, that is stunning! I wonder how hard it is to clean that?

I'm hoping for a nice, simple glass (doesn't scratch as easy as acrylic) rectangle with lots of floor surface in sand for the corys to swarm in (they are bottom-of-the-tank dwellers). And room to put a nice bit of bogwood in, and lots of plants.    Kinda like this one.

https://s14-eu5.startpage.com/cgi-bin/serveimage?url=http%3A%2F%2Ft0.gstatic.com%2Fimages%3Fq%3Dtbn%3AANd9GcQALkEvZ4fWIiv6t1HlvkutdFWem52qtMUap1p54lQxSsg4w-ir&sp=92069f8645e2e8f393ee8a52f148bc1b&anticache=441906

It's a shame that you are so far away, my daughter is losing interest in the aquarium and I would gladly give it away and get a breadmaker.  Fancy renting a car and coming down to the big smoke?