The Bathtub Story - An Aquarium Moves
27.05.2022
The story about the aquarium, called a bathtub, and its transport on the Volvo trailer is told here with fun by Tina Kniese.
We have always had aquariums, even when we were young.
In 2004, we bought a flat in St. Peter-Ording, but in the course of renovation due to lack of time, we had given away all the aquariums - which were in our rented flat in SPO - beforehand.
In 2005, Kai thought he had to buy a 3-metre tank from a Chinese restaurant on Ebay in Minden/Westphalia. We picked up the 1260-litre tank from Kai's brother in a borrowed truck and "dragged" it into the 30-square-metre living room of our ground-floor flat with 6 men (I thank the inventor of "dog thermal blankets", because we were able to "push" the tank through the rather narrow hallway with them.
The base frame was cobbled together from 12 mm beams, and the tank was later "covered" so that it sat "in the wall". Discus fish and various South American dwarf cichlids accompanied us for a long time.
In 2013, we bought a house with a lot of land in the pampas of Eiderstedt, and the aquarium had to move with us.
So we jacked up the tank - without water and inhabitants, of course - with jacks and a base frame, put rolling boards under the frame and put it on the trailer. This 25km drive was really quite sweaty... always the fear that the 1cm thick glass could break, the back wall (made of styrofoam coated with concrete and epoxy resin) could crumble or the pool could break when unloading or or or....
No, everything worked out wonderfully and when I took this photo from a car park (I drove ahead) I just thought: Great car, great aquarium, great thing!.
Of course it would have worked with almost any car with a towbar, but with a V70 it's even more "stylish".
This was our second Volvo, before that we had such a grateful black 850 estate car, which also helped us out of a jam a time or two as a "packhorse". In 2010, we built a not-so-small foldable cat enclosure out of squared timber for an acquaintance in Hamburg and strapped it onto the top of the Volvo, of course with the sleeves already mounted...the rest in the car.
I don't even remember where I was sitting...there were three of us and according to the photos I just found, I must have been lying in the footwell....
But never mind.
We currently drive an XC70 D5 AWD from 2014, and I hope that it will still produce one or two fun photos. Even if it's just me banging the car full of dogs and cats when I have another "mass appointment" at the vet.
Kind regards
Tina and Kai from Coldhörn (Tetenbüll)
